Spain in Arms: A Military History of the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939

288 Pages·2019·15.135 MB·English

by  E.R. Hooton

SPAIN IN ARMS
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SPAIN IN ARMS
A Military History of the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
E. R. HOOTON
Philadelphia & Oxford
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Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2019 by
CASEMATE PUBLISHERS
1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA
and
The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK
Copyright © E. R. Hooton, 2019
Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-637-6
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-638-3 (ePub)
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
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For a complete list of Casemate titles, please contact:
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Front cover: Bottom image: Building of the Diputación Provincial of Madrid in ruins after
the Battle of Madrid, with Republican soldiers in the streets of Teruel above.
(Wikimedia) Top image: A Condor Legion Heinkel He III drops bombs. (Robert
Forsyth)
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Contents
List of Maps vi
Preface vii
1. Testing the Blades: The Madrid Front 1
2. The New Armies 41
3. Decision on the Northern Front 81
4. High Tide for the Republic: Brunete and
the Aragon Offensive 119
5. The Pendulum Swings: Teruel and the Aragon Offensive 157
6. The Last Acts: Ebro and Catalonia 205
Bibliography 247
Index 255
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List of Maps
Map 1. Situation on August 1, 1936
Map 2. Madrid Front, November 29, 1936
Map 3. Battle of the Corunna Highway
Map 4. Battle of Jarama
Map 5. Battle of Guadalajara
Map 6. Situation on March 31, 1937
Map 7. Bilbao Campaign
Map 8. Santander Campaign
Map 9. Asturias Campaign
Map 10. Battle of Brunete
Map 11. Republican Aragon Offensive
Map 12. Battle of Teruel
Map 13. Battle of Alfambra
Map 14. Nationalist Aragon Offensive. Phase One
Map 15. Nationalist Aragon Offensive. Phase Two
Map 16. Nationalist Advance North of the Ebro
Map 17. Levante Campaign
Map 18. Situation on July 25, 1938
Map 19. Battle of the Ebro
Map 20. Catalonia Campaign
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Preface
The Spanish Civil War ended 80 years ago yet retains an extraordinary
fascination for the Spanish and for foreigners alike while continuing to
influence contemporary events, most recently the struggle for Catalonian
independence. It also arouses great passions: as this manuscript was being
completed the Spanish government decided to exhume former Nationalist
leader Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s body from his mausoleum and convert
the Valley of the Fallen into a memorial for victims of the conflict.
Whole libraries are devoted to almost every aspect of the war, with the
notable exception of its military history, which has produced more garbage than
a landfill site. Legend has the gallant Republican troops, denied weaponry by
the western democracies, overwhelmed on the battlefield by an army of largely
Italian, Moorish, and German troops with numerical superiority in armor,
aviation, and artillery to achieve a Nationalist victory. There is an element
of truth in this claim, but Nationalist success relied upon Spanish troops
and was due more to their application of muscle to produce a succession of
victories which made them stronger by providing new men and material. But
their greatest and most profoundly underestimated success was in mobilizing
resources.
The reason why the legend has remained unchallenged may be found in
human psychology, in which the defeated console themselves with tales of
gallantry against overwhelming odds, tales which, if unchallenged, become
accepted as history. This is true of the South in the American Civil War, of
Germany in two world wars, of the western European campaign of 1940, and
of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. In the last, the legend was partly
accepted by the victors who could argue that they snatched victory against
overwhelming odds.
The paean to Republican heroism was sung loudly by the Communist
Party’s propaganda chorus during the war to drown out questions about the
military effort on both sides. Consequently too many foreign historians have
unquestioningly followed this line, less as an ideological choice and more
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viii • spain in arms
a professional one. Most historians focus upon diplomatic, economic, and
social events, for they have little interest in, or knowledge of, military history
which many seem to disdain. This lack of battlefield knowledge means that
descriptions of military events are high on rhetoric and short on detail,
while parroting the term “Blitzkrieg” to describe combined armored and
air operations makes, by extrapolation, Henri Pétain and Sir Douglas Haig
pioneers of mechanized warfare!
This is the first attempt in English to redress the balance and to produce
a purely military history of the conflict from December 1936, when the two
armies emerged, until the Republic’s surrender in 1939. It is based upon
numerous published Spanish works, themselves the result of thousands of
hours in the scattered Spanish archives, augmented by Italian and Russian
books as well as German and British records, the latter including intercepted
Italian communications. Some will question this reliance upon published
sources, but since these are based upon well-mined archives in Spain, Italy,
and Russia, the author sees no reason to reinvent the wheel, especially as many
foreign writers on the subject have followed this precedent.
The book is an attempt to counteract simplistic views reminiscent of
contemporary Wild West movies in which the hero and villain wore white
and black hats respectively. The weakness of such views was brought home to
the author during a tour of Castile with a Catalonian guide. The young lady
mentioned that her parents had always spoken Catalan within their home
even when it was officially banned during the Franco era and their children
had followed suit. She also said that her father had served as an officer during
the Civil War, not with the Catalonian or Republican governments but with
Franco!
The simplistic approach to Spain’s military struggle extends to issues
such as the bombing of Guernica (see Chapter 3), to “prove” this was a
German terror attack, and the “failure” of the western democracies to arm
the Republic, which is always ascribed to distaste for the Republic’s left-wing
stance when it was actually due to a scarcity of resources. Indeed the much
despised non-intervention was less of a political statement than an admission
of military weakness.
This demonstrates that the military struggle in Spain should not be seen
in isolation. There are echoes of World War I and omens of World War II,
while the conflict must be examined against these influences as well as against
both contemporary European military doctrine and the issue of rearmament.
Doctrine is a very narrow field of interest and for this reason it is ignored
by historians studying the Iberian conflict. What is less understandable is
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preface • ix
the failure to exploit Spanish sources which are a deep mine of information;
indeed the author was astonished to find that even when foreign writers
referred to works available for 40 years there was little attempt to determine
the background to military events such as the Teruel campaign or Nationalist
military decision-making.
A major frustration for any attempt to write about the military events of
this conflict is the question of statistics, especially relating to logistics and
casualties. The Spanish sometimes took a casual attitude to record keeping,
and indeed the author has yet to see any source providing detailed figures on
air sorties, apart from a total for the Ebro campaign. Spanish historians have
done their best, especially with casualties, but it is evidently a difficult task and
sometimes met only by a best estimate. Generally the author has accepted the
scholarship of the distinguished historian José Manuel Martinez Bande, but it
is interesting to note that he provides no indication of Nationalist casualties
in his account of the 1938 Levante campaign.
However, the British politician George Canning once observed, “Statistics
can tell you everything you wish to know, except the truth,” and one area of
the conflict where this applies is in artillery. The enumeration of ordnance is
usually divided into four areas; light (30–74mm), field (75–89mm), medium
(90–159mm), and heavy (160mm and above). Neither side possessed the huge
artillery trains of the Western Front; indeed in contrast to the conventional
European table of organization and equipment, which called for at least four
guns per battery (six in the British Army), Spanish batteries usually had three
or, in the heaviest batteries, only two. Most “barrel-counting” in the conflict
includes light ordnance, such as the 65mm “Tiger” Italian mountain guns
which were a significant part of the Nationalist artillery train, but antitank
and heavy antiaircraft guns (75–88mm) are often included. I have included
light artillery, but not antitank ordnance, in statistics of artillery support.
Statistics on air strength are more complete and it is worth comparing the
figures for both sides.
While this account is primarily for those interested in military history, the
author hopes it will also prove valuable for these whose knowledge of that
subject is limited. Some explanation of terminology would, therefore, not
go amiss.
The terms Tactical, Operational, and Strategic may well cause some bewil-
derment. In the past the terms Tactical and Strategic were the norm but during
the 19th century the German and Russian armies felt they lacked precision.
They introduced the concept of the Operational Level which entered general
military usage during the 1880s. At its most simplistic the Tactical Level are
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