Читать книгу Franco - Paul Preston - Страница 11

THERE CAN be no doubt that the unlikely figure of Franco, short and with a premature paunch, had a remarkable power to lift the morale of those around him. It was a quality which would play a crucial role in the Nationalist victory and would single him out as leader of the rebel war effort. Having finally shaken himself out of his spring-time hesitations, he once again temporarily resumed the adventurous persona which had served him so well in his rise to the rank of general. It could not have been better suited to the early days of the rising and would see him victoriously through the first months of the Civil War and take him to the doors of absolute power. At that point, caution would reassert itself.

When he drove into Tetuán from the aerodrome at 7.30 a.m. on the morning of Sunday 19 July, the streets were already lined with people shouting ‘¡Viva España!’ and ‘¡Viva Franco!’. He was greeted at the offices of the Spanish High Commission by military bands and gushingly enthusiastic officers. One of his first acts in his new headquarters was to draw up an address to his fellow military rebels throughout Morocco and in Spain. The text throbbed with self-confidence. Declaring that ‘Spain is saved’, it ended with words which summed up Franco’s unquestioning confidence, ‘Blind faith, no doubts, firm energy without vacillations, because the Patria demands it. The Movimiento sweeps all before it and there is no human force that can stop it’. Broadcast repeatedly by local radio stations, it had the instant effect of raising rebel spirits. When he reached Ceuta in the early afternoon, the scenes which he encountered were more consistent with the beginning of a great adventure than of a bloody civil war. Later in the day, he drove to the headquarters of the Legion in Dar Riffien. Nearly sixteen years earlier, he had arrived there for the first time to become second-in-command of the newly created force. His sense of destiny cannot fail to have been excited by the fact that now he was met by wildly euphoric soldiers chanting ‘Franco! Franco! Franco!’. Yagüe made a short and emotional speech: ‘Here they are, just as you left them … Magnificent and ready for anything. You, Franco, who so many times led them to victory, lead them again for the honour of Spain’. The newly arrived leader, on the verge of tears, embraced Yagüe and spoke to the Legionarios. He recognized that they were hungry for combat and raised their pay, already double that of the regular Army, by one peseta per day.¹

That practical gesture was evidence that, behind the rhetoric, he was aware of the need to consolidate the support of those on whom he would have to rely in the next crucial weeks. Immediately on arriving at the High Commission, he had spent time in conclave with Colonels Saenz de Buruaga, Beigbeder and Martín Moreno discussing ways of recruiting Moorish volunteers.² Now, on his return to Tetuán from Dar-Riffien, he took a further measure to secure Moroccan goodwill. He awarded the Gran Visir Sidi Ahmed el Gamnia Spain’s highest medal for bravery, the Gran Cruz Laureada de San Fernando, for his efforts in containing single-handed an anti-Spanish riot in Tetuán.³ It was a gesture which was to facilitate the subsequent recruiting of Moroccan mercenaries to fight in peninsular Spain.⁴

The readiness of Franco to use Moroccan troops in Spain had already been demonstrated in October 1934. The gruesome practices of the Legion and the Regulares were to be repeated with terrible efficacy during the bloodthirsty advance of the Army of Africa towards Madrid in 1936. At a conscious level, it was no doubt for him a simple military decision. The Legion and the Regulares were the most effective soldiers in the Spanish armed forces and it was natural that he would use them without agonizing over the moral implications. The central epic of Spanish history, deeply embedded in the national culture and especially so in right-wing culture, was the struggle against the Moors from 711 to 1492. In more recent times, the conquest of the Moroccan protectorate had cost tens of thousands of Spanish lives. Accordingly, the use of Moorish mercenaries against Spanish civilians was fraught with significance. It showed just how partial and partisan in class terms was the Nationalists’ interpretation of patriotism and their determination to win whatever the price in blood.

Franco believed that he was rebelling to save the Patria, or rather his version of it, from Communist infiltration, and any means to do so were licit. He did not view liberal and working class voters for the Popular Front as part of the Patria. In that sense, as the Asturian campaign of 1934 had suggested, Franco would regard the working class militiamen who were about to oppose his advance on Madrid in the same way as he had regarded the Moorish tribesmen whom it had been his job to pacify between 1912 and 1925. He would conduct the early stages of his war effort as if it were a colonial war against a racially contemptible enemy. The Moors would spread terror wherever they went, loot the villages they captured, rape the women they found, kill their prisoners and sexually mutilate the corpses.⁵ Franco knew that such would be the case and had written a book in which his approval of such methods was clear.⁶ If he had any qualms, they were no doubt dispelled by an awareness of the enormity of the task facing himself and his fellow rebels. Franco knew that, if they failed, they would be shot. In such a context, the Army of Africa was a priceless asset, a force of shock troops capable of absorbing losses without there being political repercussions.⁷ The use of terror, both immediate and as a long-term investment, was something which Franco understood instinctively. During, and long after the Civil War, those of his enemies not physically eliminated would be broken by fear, terrorised out of opposition and forced to seek survival in apathy.

Because of his cool resolve and his infectious optimism, the decision of Franco to join the rising and to take over the Spanish forces in Morocco was a considerable boost to the morale of the rebels everywhere. Described as ‘brother of the well-known airman’ and ‘a turncoat general’ by The Times, he was stripped of his rank by the Republic on 19 July.⁸ He was one of only four of the twenty-one Major-Generals on active service to declare against the government, the others being Goded, Queipo and Cabanellas.⁹ There were officers whose decision to join the rising was clinched by hearing about Franco.¹⁰ More than one rebel officer in mainland Spain reacted to the news with a spontaneous shout of ‘¡Franquito está con nosotros! ¡Hemos ganado!’ (Franco’s with us. We’ve won).¹¹ They were wrong in the sense that the plotters, with the partial exception of Franco, who expected the struggle to last a couple of months, had not foreseen that the attempted coup would turn into a long civil war. Their plans had been for a rapid alzamiento, or rising, to be followed by a military directory like that established by Primo de Rivera in 1923, and they had not counted on the strength of working class resistance.

Nevertheless, the plotters were fortunate that their two most able generals, Franco and Mola, had been successful in the early hours of the coup. While Franco to the far south of Spanish territory could rely on the brutal military forces of the Moroccan protectorate, Mola, in the north enjoyed the almost uniformly committed support of the local civilian Carlists of Navarre. In Pamplona, the Carlist population had turned the coup into a popular festival, thronging the streets and shouting ¡Viva Cristo Rey! (long live Christ the King). These two successes permitted the implementation of the rebel plan of simultaneous marches on Madrid.

On 18 July, that broad strategy was still in the future. The rising had been successful only in the north and north-west of Spain, and in isolated pockets of the south. With a few exceptions, rebel triumphs followed the electoral geography of the Republic. In Galicia and the deeply Catholic rural regions of Old Castile and León, where the Right had enjoyed mass support, the coup met little opposition. The conservative ecclesiastical market towns – Burgos, Salamanca, Zamora, Segovia and Avila, fell almost without struggle. In contrast, in Valladolid, after Generals Andrés Saliquet and Miguel Ponte had arrested the head of the VII Military Region, General Nicolás Molero, it took their men, aided by local Falangist militia, nearly twenty-four hours to crush the Socialist railway workers of Valladolid.¹² Elsewhere, in most of the Andalusian countryside, where the landless labourers formed the mass of the population, the left took power. In the southern cities, it was a different story. A general strike in Cádiz seemed to have won the town for the workers but after the arrival of reinforcements from Morocco, the rebels under Generals José López Pinto and José Enrique Varela, gained control. Córdoba, Huelva, Seville and Granada all fell after the savage liquidation of working class resistance. Seville, the Andalusian capital and the most revolutionary southern city, fell to the lanky eccentric Queipo de Llano and a handful of fellow-conspirators who seized the divisional military headquarters by bluff and bravado. Related to Alcalá Zamora by marriage, Queipo had been considered a republican until the demise of the President inspired a seething hatred of the regime. Perhaps in expiation of his republican past, he would soon be notorious for the implacable ferocity first demonstrated by the bloody repression of working class districts during his take-over of Seville.¹³

In most major urban and industrial centres – Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao – the popular forces by-passed the dithering Republican government and seized power, defeating the military rebels in the process. In Madrid, the general in charge of the rising, Rafael Villegas, was in hiding and sent his second-in-command, General Fanjul, to take command of the one post they held, the Montaña barracks. Besieged by local working class forces, Fanjul was captured and subsequently tried and executed.¹⁴ After defeating the rebels at the Montaña barracks, left-wing militiamen from the capital headed south to reverse the success of the rising in Toledo. With loyal regular troops, they captured the town. However, the rebels under Colonel José Moscardó, the town’s military commander, retreated into the Alcázar, the impregnable fortress which dominates both Toledo and the river Tagus which curls around it on the southern, eastern and western sides.

The defeat of the rising in Barcelona deprived the conspirators of one of their most able generals, Manuel Goded, a potential rival to Franco both militarily and politically. In Barcelona, Companys refused to issue arms but depots were seized by the CNT. In the early hours of 19 July, rebel troops began to march on the city centre. They were met by anarchists and the local Civil Guard which, decisively, had stayed loyal. The CNT stormed the Atarazanas barracks, where the rebels had set up headquarters. When Goded arrived by seaplane from the Balearic Islands to join them, the rising was already defeated. Captured, he was forced to broadcast an appeal to his followers to lay down their arms. The defeat of the rebellion in Barcelona was vital for the government, since it ensured that all of Catalonia would remain loyal.¹⁵

In the Basque Country, divided between its Catholic peasantry and its urban Socialists, the Republic’s support for local national regionalist aspirations tipped the balance against the rebels. As Franco had foreseen, the role of the Civil Guard and the Assault Guards was to be crucial. Where the two police forces remained loyal to the government, as they did in most large cities, the conspirators were defeated. In Zaragoza, the stronghold of the CNT, where they did not, the decisive united action of the police and the military garrison had taken over the city before the anarcho-syndicalist masses could react. In Oviedo, the audacious military commander, Colonel Antonio Aranda, seized power by trickery and bravery. He persuaded both Madrid and the local Asturian left-wing forces that he was true to the Republic. Several thousand miners confidently left the city to assist in the defence of Madrid only for many of them to be massacred in a Civil Guard ambush in Ponferrada. Aranda, after speaking with Mola on the telephone, declared for the rebels. By the following day, Oviedo was under siege from enraged miners.¹⁶ The insurgent triumphs in Oviedo, Zaragoza and the provincial capitals of Andalusia had faced sufficient popular hostility to suggest that a full-scale war of conquest would have to be fought before the rebels would control of all of Spain.

After three days, the conspirators held about one third of Spain in a huge block including Galicia, León, Old Castile, Aragón and part of Extremadura, together with isolated enclaves like Oviedo, Seville and Córdoba. Galicia was crucial for its ports, agricultural products and as a base for attacks on Asturias. The rebels also had the great wheat-growing areas, but the main centres of both heavy and light industry in Spain remained in Republican hands. They faced the legitimate government and much of the Army, although its loyalty was sufficiently questionable for the Republican authorities to make less than full use of it. The government was unstable and indecisive. Indeed, the rebels received a promising indication of the real balance of power when Casares Quiroga resigned to be replaced briefly by a cabinet bent on some form of compromise with the rebels. When Casares withdrew, President Azaña held consultations with the moderate Republican, Diego Martínez Barrio, with the Socialists Largo Caballero and Prieto and with his friend, the conservative Republican, Felipe Sánchez Román. As the basis of a compromise, Sánchez Román suggested a package of measures including the prohibition of strikes and a total crack-down on left-wing militias. The outcome was a cabinet of the centre under Martínez Barrio. Convinced that this was a cabinet ready to capitulate to military demands, the rebels were in no mood for compromise.¹⁷

It was now too late. Neither Mola nor the Republican forces to the left of Martínez Barrio were prepared to accept any deal. When Martínez Barrio made his fateful telephone call to Mola at 2 a.m. on 19 July, the conversation was polite but sterile. Offered a post in the government, Mola refused on the grounds that it was too late and an accommodation would mean the betrayal of the rank-and-file of both sides.¹⁸ On the following day, Martínez Barrio was replaced by José Giral, a follower of Azaña. After his Minister of War, General José Miaja, also tried unsuccessfully to negotiate Mola’s surrender, Giral quickly grasped the nature of the situation and took the crucial step of authorizing the arming of the workers. Thereafter, the defence of the Republic fell to the left-wing militias. In consequence, the revolution which Franco believed himself to have been forestalling was itself precipitated by the military rebellion. In taking up arms to fight the rebels, the Left picked up the power abandoned by the bourgeois political establishment which had crumbled. The middle class Republican Left, the moderate Socialists and the Communist Party then combined to play down the revolution and restore power to the bourgeois Republic. By May 1937, they would be successful, suffocating the revolutionary élan of the working class along the way.

In the interim, a beleagured state, under attack from part of its Army and unable to trust most of those who declared themselves loyal, with its judiciary and police force at best divided, saw much day-to-day power pass to ad hoc revolutionary bodies. Under such circumstances, the Republican authorities were unable, in the early weeks and months, to prevent extremist elements committing atrocities against rightists in the Republican zone. This gave a retrospective justification for a military rising which had no prior agreed objectives. The fact that it would be the Communists who eventually took the lead in the restoration of order and the crushing of the revolution was simply ignored by officers like Franco who believed that they had risen to defeat the Communist menace. That generalised objective was the nearest that the conspirators had to a political plan. Franco’s own bizarre declaration in the Canary Islands before setting off for Africa ended ‘Fraternity, Liberty and Equality’. Many of the declarations by other officers ended with the cry ‘¡Viva la República!’. At most, they knew that they planned to set up a military dictatorship, in the specific form of a military directory.¹⁹

Equally vague were the military prognostications. There were those, like General Orgaz, who believed that the rising would have achieved its objectives within a matter of hours or at most days.²⁰ Mola, realizing the crucial importance of Madrid, and anticipating a possible failure in the capital, expected that a dual advance from Navarre and the south would be necessary and therefore require a short civil war lasting two or three weeks. The reverses of the first few days sowed doubts in the minds of the early optimists. Almost alone among the conspirators, Franco, with his obsessions about the importance of the Civil Guard, had taken a more realistic view. Not even he had anticipated a war which would have gone on much beyond mid-September. However, he took the disappointments of the first few days phlegmatically, resourcefully seeking new solutions and insisting to all around him that they must have ‘blind faith’ in victory. There can be little doubt that his ‘blind faith’ was sincere. It reflected both his temperament and his long-held conviction that superior morale won battles, something learned in Africa. From his first days with the Legion, he retained the belief that morale had to be backed up by iron discipline. The categorical optimism of his first radio broadcasts in Tetuán was complemented with dire warnings about what would happen to those who opposed the rebels. On 21 July, he promised that the disorders (‘hechos vandálicos’) of the Popular Front would receive ‘exemplary punishment’. On 22 July, he said ‘for those who persist in opposing us or hope to surrender at the last minute, there will be no pardon’.²¹

Unaware as yet of the fate of the rising on the mainland, Franco had set up headquarters in the officers of the Spanish High Commission in Tetuán. One of the first issues with which he had to deal provided an opportunity to demonstrate precisely the kind of iron discipline from which he believed the will to win would grow. On arrival at Tetuán, he was informed that his first cousin Major Ricardo de la Puente Bahamonde had been arrested and was about to undergo a summary court martial for having tried to hold the Sania Ramel airport of Tetuán for the Republic and then, when that was no longer possible, disabling the aircraft there. According to Franco’s niece, he and Ricardo de la Puente were more like brothers than cousins. As adults, their ideological differences became acute. Franco had had him removed from his post during the Asturian rising. In one of their many arguments, Franco once exclaimed ‘one day I’m going to have you shot’. De la Puente was now condemned to death and Franco did nothing to save him. Franco believed that a pardon would have been taken as a sign of weakness, something he was not prepared to risk. Rather than have to decide between approving the death sentence or ordering a pardon, he briefly handed over command to Orgaz and left the final decision to him.²²

While Franco consolidated his hold on Morocco, things were not going well for the Nationalists on the other side of the Straits. The losses of Fanjul in Madrid and Goded in Barcelona were substantial blows.²³ Now, as Mola and other successful conspirators awaited Sanjurjo’s arrival from his Portuguese exile to lead a triumphal march on Madrid, at dawn on 21 July, they received more bad news.²⁴ Sanjurjo had been killed in bizarre circumstances. On 19 July, Mola’s envoy, Juan Antonio Ansaldo, the monarchist air-ace and playboy who had once organized Falangist terror squads, had arrived in Estoril at the summer house where General Sanjurjo was staying.²⁵ His tiny Puss Moth bi-plane seemed an odd choice for the mission the more so as the far more suitable Dragon Rapide used by Franco had just landed in Lisbon almost certainly with a view to picking up Sanjurjo. The journey could also have been made by road. However, when Ansaldo arrived, he announced dramatically to an enthusiastic group of Sanjurjo’s hangers-on that he was placing himself at the orders of the Spanish Chief of State. Overcome with emotion at this theatrical display of public respect, Sanjurjo agreed to travel with him.²⁶

To add to the problems posed by the minuscule scale of Ansaldo’s aeroplane, the Portuguese authorities now intervened. Although Sanjurjo was legally in the country as a tourist, the Portuguese government did not want trouble with Madrid. Accordingly, Ansaldo was obliged to clear customs and depart alone from the airport of Santa Cruz. He was then to return towards Estoril and collect Sanjurjo on 20 July at a disused race-track called La Marinha at Boca do Inferno (the mouth of hell) near Cascaes. In addition to his own rather portly self, Sanjurjo had, according to Ansaldo, a large suitcase containing uniforms and medals for his ceremonial entry into Madrid. The wind forced Ansaldo to take off in the direction of some trees. The overweight aircraft had insufficient lift to prevent the propeller clipping the tree tops. It crashed and burst into flames. Sanjurjo died although his pilot survived.²⁷ Contrary to Ansaldo’s version, it was later claimed in Portugal that the crash was the result of an anarchist bomb.²⁸

Whatever the cause, the death of Sanjurjo was to have a profound impact on the course of the war and on the career of General Franco. He was the conspirator’s unanimous choice as leader. Now, with Fanjul and Goded eliminated, his death left Mola as the only general to be a future challenger to Franco. Mola’s position as ‘Director’ of the rising was in any case more than matched by Franco’s control of the Moroccan Army which would soon emerge as the cornerstone of Nationalist success. When war broke out, the military forces in the Peninsula, approximately one hundred and thirty thousand men in the Army and thirty-three thousand Civil Guards, were divided almost equally between rebels and loyalists. However, that broad stalemate was dramatically altered by the fact that the entire Army of Africa was with the rebels. Against the battle-hardened colonial Army, the improvised militiamen and raw conscripts, with neither logistical support nor overall commanders, had little chance.²⁹ Apart from Mola, the only other potential challenger to Franco’s pre-eminence was the Falangist leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, but he was in a Republican prison in Alicante.

In these early days of the rising, it is unlikely that even the quietly ambitious Franco would have been thinking of anything but winning the war. The death of Sanjurjo was a harsh demonstration to the conspirators that the alzamiento was far from the instant success for which they had hoped. The collapse of the revolt in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga and Bilbao obliged the insurgents to evolve a plan of attack to conquer the rest of Spain. Since Madrid was seen as the hub of Republican resistance, their strategy was to take the form of drives on the Spanish capital by Mola’s northern Army and Franco’s African forces. The rebels, however, confronted unexpected problems. Mola’s efforts were to be dissipated by the need to send troops to San Sebastián and to Aragón. Moreover, the mixed columns of soldiers, Carlist Requetés and Falangists sent by Mola against Madrid were surprisingly halted at the Somosierra pass in the Sierra to the north and at the Alto del León to the north-west by the improvised workers’ militias from the capital. Threatened from the Republican-held provinces of Santander, Asturias and the Basque Country, the northern Army was also impeded by lack of arms and ammunition.

Franco’s Army was paralysed by the problem of transport to the mainland. The conspirators had taken for granted that the fleet would be with them but their hopes had been dashed by a below-decks mutiny. In facing the daunting problem of being blockaded in Morocco, Franco displayed a glacial sang froid. His apparent lack of nerves prevented his being dismayed by the numerous reverses that the rebels had encountered in the first forty-eight hours. Even the worst news never disturbed his sleep.³⁰ Franco’s optimism and his determination to win was the dominant theme of an interview which he gave to the American reporter Jay Allen in Tetuán on 27 July. When Allen asked him how long the killing would continue now that the coup had failed, Franco replied ‘there can be no compromise, no truce. I shall go on preparing my advance to Madrid. I shall advance. I shall take the capital. I shall save Spain from Marxism at whatever cost.’ Denying that there was a stalemate, Franco declared ‘I have had setbacks, the defection of the Fleet was a blow, but I shall continue to advance. Shortly, very shortly, my troops will have pacified the country and all of this will soon seem like a nightmare.’ Allen responded ‘that means that you will have to shoot half Spain?’, at which a smiling Franco said ‘I repeat, at whatever cost.’³¹

Before Franco had arrived in Tetuán, on 18 July, the destroyer Churruca and two merchant steamers, the Cabo Espartel and the Lázaro and a ferry boat had managed to get 220 men to Cádiz. However, within a matter of hours the crew of the Churruca, like those of many other Spanish naval vessels, mutinied against their rebel officers. On 19 July, the gunboat Dato and another ferry got a further 170 to Algeciras. In the following days, only a few more troops were able to cross in Moroccan lateen-rigged feluccas (faluchos).³² These men were to have a crucial impact on the success of the rising in Cádiz, Algeciras and La Línea. Within hours of arriving in Tetuán, Franco had discussed with his cousin Pacón and Colonel Yagüe the urgent problem of getting the Legion across the Straits of Gibraltar. The Moroccan Army was effectively immobilized. However, Franco did have two major strokes of luck in this regard. The first was the sympathy for his cause of the authorities on the Rock who refused facilities for the Republican fleet. The second was that the tall, incorruptible General Alfredo Kindelán, the founder of the Spanish Air Force and a prominent monarchist conspirator, happened to be in Cádiz as Mola’s liaison with senior naval officers. In the confusion, and with his contact with Mola broken, Kindelán linked up with the troops recently arrived from Morocco. From Algeciras, he spoke by telephone with Franco who made him head of his Air Force.³³ Kindelán was to be a useful asset in organizing the crossing of the Straits.

Cut off by sea from mainland Spain, Franco, advised by Kindelán, began to toy with the then revolutionary idea of getting his Army across the Straits by air and to seek a way of breaking through the blockade by sea.³⁴ The few aircraft available at Tetuán had been damaged by the sabotage efforts of Major de la Puente Bahamonde. Those units and others at Seville were soon repaired and in service. A few Legionarios able to cross the Straits by air landed at Tablada Aerodrome at Seville and helped consolidate Queipo de Llano’s hold on the city.³⁵ Thereafter, from dawn to late in the evening each day, a constant shuttle was maintained by three Fokker F.VIIb3m trimotor transports and one Dornier DoJ Wal flying boat. Each aircraft did four trips per day; the Fokkers carrying sixteen to twenty soldiers and equipment every time, the Dornier able to carry only twelve and having to land in Algeciras Bay. From 25 July, the original four aircraft were joined by a Douglas DC-2 capable of carrying twenty-five men and, from the end of the month, by another Dornier DoJ Wal flying boat.³⁶

The airlift was as yet far too slow. Ironically, the main worry of Franco and his cousin was that Mola might get to Madrid before them. At one point, Franco commented ‘in September, I’ll be back in the Canary Islands, happy and contented, after obtaining a rapid triumph over Communism’.³⁷ Even before German and Italian assistance arrived, Franco was fortunate that Kindelán, the energetic Major Julio García de Cáceres and the Air Force pilots who had joined the uprising worked miracles, both repairing the flying boats which had been out of action and putting eight aged Breguet XIX biplane light bombers and two Nieuport 52 fighters at his disposal. These would provide the escorts whose harassment of the Republican navy would sow panic among the inexperienced left-wing crews when Franco decided to risk sea crossings.³⁸ Franco recognized the importance of the contribution that was being made by Kindelán, by naming him on 18 August, General Jefe del Aire.³⁹

Even before the early limited airlift was properly under way, Franco was seeking a way of breaking through the sea blockade. On the evening of 20 July, he called a meeting of his staff, attended by Yagüe, Beigbeder, Saenz de Buruaga and Kindelán, as well as naval and Air Force officers. Assured by Kindelán that the aircraft available could deal with any hostile vessels, Franco decided to send a troop convoy by sea from Ceuta at the earliest opportunity. He overruled strong expressions of doubt, particularly from Yagüe and the naval officers present, who were concerned at the threat posed by the Republican navy. Franco, however, convinced as always of the importance of moral factors in deciding battles, believed that the Republican crews, without trained officers to navigate, oversee the engine rooms or direct the guns, would present little danger. He acknowledged the validity of the objections, but simply brushed them aside. ‘I have to get across and I will get across’. It would be one of the few times that Franco the cautious and meticulous planner would take an audacious risk. He decided against a night crossing because his one major advantage, the Republican naval crews’ fear of air attack would be neutralized. The precise date of the convoy would be left until the Nationalists had better air cover and more intelligence of Republican fleet movements.⁴⁰ It would eventually take place on 5 August.

Ultimately, the conversion of the rising into a long drawn-out war of attrition was to favour Franco’s political position and the establishment of a personal dictatorship. At first, however, Franco’s isolation in Africa left the political leadership of the coup in the hands of Mola. Nevertheless, although Franco’s every thought may have been on winning the war, he still took for granted that he was the leading rebel once Sanjurjo was dead, informing both the Germans and the Italians of this. His ambitions were, however, pre-empted by events in the north.

On 19 July, having made his declaration of martial law in Pamplona, Mola had sketched out an amplified version of his earlier document on the military directory and its corporative policies.⁴¹ On 23 July, he set up a seven-man Junta de Defensa Nacional in Burgos under the nominal presidency of General Cabanellas, the most senior Major-General in the Nationalist camp after the death of Sanjurjo. It consisted of Generals Mola, Miguel Ponte, Fidel Dávila and Andrés Saliquet and two colonels from the general staff, Federico Montaner and Fernando Moreno Calderón. Mola also sought some civilian input from the Renovación Española group.⁴² Having been a deputy for Jaén in Lerroux’s Radical Party between 1933 and 1935, Cabanellas was regarded by his fellow members as dangerously liberal. His elevation to preside the Junta reflected not simply his seniority but Mola’s anxiety to get him away from active command in Zaragoza. Mola himself had visited Zaragoza on 21 July and had been appalled to find Cabanellas exercising restraint in crushing opposition to the rising and contemplating using ex-members of the Radical Party to create a municipal government.⁴³ On 24 July, the Junta named Franco head of its forces on the southern front. On 1 August, Captain Francisco Moreno Fernández, was named Admiral in command of the section of the navy which had not remained loyal to the Republic, and was added to the Junta.⁴⁴

Only on 3 August, after his first units had crossed the Straits would Franco be added to the Junta de Burgos along with Queipo de Llano and Orgaz. The functions of the Junta were extremely vague. Indeed, the powers of Cabanellas were no more than symbolic. Queipo quickly established de facto a kind of vice-royal fief in Seville from which he would eventually govern most of the south.⁴⁵ There was potential friction between Queipo and Franco. Queipo loathed Franco personally and Franco distrusted Queipo as one of the generals who had betrayed the monarchy in 1931. In addition, there was a more immediate source of tension. Queipo wanted to use the troops being sent from Africa for a major campaign to spread out from the Seville-Huelva-Cádiz triangle which he controlled. He was eager to conquer all of Andalusia, the central and eastern hinterland of which was experiencing a process of revolutionary collectivisation.⁴⁶ Franco simply ignored Queipo’s aspirations.

In order to resolve the immediate difficulties over transporting the Moroccan Army across the Straits, Franco had turned to fellow rightists abroad for help. On 19 July, the Dragon Rapide had set off for Lisbon and then Marseille, en route back to London. Aboard the aircraft, Luis Bolín carried the paper scribbled by Franco authorizing him to negotiate the purchase of aircraft and other supplies. Bolín left the Dragon Rapide at Marseille and continued on to Rome by train.⁴⁷ Franco’s early efforts to gain foreign assistance were ultimately successful but they involved several days of frantic effort and frustration. Moreover, it was to be his own efforts, rather than those of Bolín or the monarchist emissaries sent by Mola, which would secure Italian aid since Mussolini was highly suspicious of Spanish rightists eternally announcing that their revolution was about to start.⁴⁸

While Bolín was still travelling, Franco spoke on 20 July to the Italian military attaché in Tangier, Major Giuseppe Luccardi and asked for his help in obtaining transport aircraft. Luccardi telegraphed military intelligence in Rome, where there was grave doubt about the wisdom of helping the Spanish rebels, doubts shared to the full by Mussolini.⁴⁹ On 21 July, Franco spoke again to Major Luccardi, stressing the desperate difficulties that he faced in getting his troops across the Straits. Luccardi was sufficiently impressed to put Franco in touch with the Italian Minister Plenipotentiary in Tangier, Pier Filippo de Rossi del Lion Nero. Franco convinced him on 22 July to send a telegram to Rome requesting twelve bombers or civilian transport aircraft. Mussolini simply scribbled ‘NO’ in blue pencil at the bottom of the telegram. On a desperate follow-up telegram, the Duce wrote only ‘FILE’.⁵⁰ Meanwhile, Bolín had arrived in Rome on 21 July. At first, he and the Marqués de Viana, armed with a letter of presentation from the exiled Alfonso XIII, were received enthusiastically by the new Italian foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano. Fresh from his long conversation with Franco in Casablanca in the early hours of 19 July, Bolín assured Ciano that, with Sanjurjo dead, Franco would be undisputed leader of the rising. Despite Ciano’s initial sympathy, after consulting Mussolini, he turned Bolín away.⁵¹ However, Ciano had been sufficiently intrigued by De Rossi’s telegram to request further assessments from Tangier of the seriousness of Franco’s bid for power.⁵²

While he was still evaluating the information coming in from Tangier, Ciano received on 25 July a more prestigious delegation sent by General Mola. Unaware of Franco’s efforts to secure Italian assistance, Mola had called a meeting in Burgos on 22 July with six important monarchists.^* Mola outlined the need for foreign help and it was decided that José Ignacio Escobar, the aristocratic owner of La Época, would go to Berlin and Antonio Goicoechea, who had signed a pact with Mussolini in March 1934, would lead a delegation to Rome. When Goicoechea’s group spoke to Ciano they revealed that Mola was more concerned with rifle cartridges than with aeroplanes.⁵³ Mola’s plea for ammunition seemed small-scale in comparison with Franco’s ambitious appeal. Mussolini was by this time beginning to get interested in the Spanish situation as a consequence of the news that the French were about to aid the Republic.⁵⁴ Accordingly, in response more to Franco’s personal efforts with the Italian authorities in Tangier than to the efforts of monarchists in Rome, Ciano finally responded to Franco’s request for aircraft on 28 July with twelve Savoia-Marchetti S.81 Pipistrello bombers.⁵⁵

The bombers were despatched from the Sardinian capital Cagliari in the early hours of the morning of 30 July. As a result of unexpectedly strong headwinds, three ran out of fuel, one crashing into the sea, one crashing while attempting an emergency landing at Oujda near the Algerian border and a third landing safely in the French zone of Morocco where it was impounded.⁵⁶ On 30 July, Franco was informed that the remaining nine had landed at the aerodrome of Nador. However, they were grounded for the next five days until a tanker of high-octane fuel for their Alfa Romeo engines was sent from Cagliari. Since there were insufficient Spaniards able to fly them, the Italian pilots enrolled in the Spanish Foreign Legion.⁵⁷ German aircraft also soon began to arrive and the operation for getting the troops of the Moroccan Army across the Straits intensified.

The history of the negotiations for Italian aid shows Franco seizing the initiative and pursuing it with dogged determination. It also shows that Mussolini and Ciano unequivocally placed their bets on Franco rather than on Mola. The exchange of telegrams between Ciano and De Rossi refers to the ‘Francoist’ rebellion and to ‘Franco’s movement’.⁵⁸ In Germany too, Franco’s contacts prospered more. In fact, Mola had substantial prior connections but his various emissaries got entangled in the web of low level bureaucracy in Berlin. In contrast, Franco had the good fortune to secure the backing of energetic Nazis resident in Morocco who had good party contacts through the Auslandorganisation. Moreover, as it had with the Italians, his command of the most powerful section of the Spanish Army weighed heavily with the Germans.⁵⁹

Franco’s first efforts to get German help were unambitious. Among his staff in Tetuán, the person with the best German contacts was Beigbeder. Accordingly, on 22 July, Franco and Beigbeder asked the German consulate at Tetuán to send a telegram to General Erich Kühlental, the German military attaché to both France and Spain, an admirer of Franco who was based in Paris. The telegram requested that he arrange for ten troop-transport planes with German crews to be sent to Spanish Morocco and ended ‘The contract will be signed afterwards. Very urgent! On the word of General Franco and Spain’. This modest telegram was incapable of instigating the sort of official help that Franco needed. It received a cool reception when it reached Berlin in the early hours of the morning of 23 July.⁶⁰ However, almost immediately after its despatch, Franco had decided to make a direct appeal to Hitler.

On 21 July, the day before sending the telegram to Kühlental, Franco had been approached by a German businessman resident in Morocco, Johannes Eberhard Franz Bernhardt, who was an active Nazi Party member and friend of Mola, Yagüe, Beigbeder and other Africanistas. Bernhardt was to be the key to decisive German assistance. Uneasy about the telegram to Kühlental, Franco decided later in the day on 22 July to use Bernhardt to make a formal approach to the Third Reich for transport aircraft. Bernhardt informed the Ortsgruppenleiter of the Nazi Party in Morocco, another resident Nazi businessman, Adolf Langenheim.⁶¹ Langenheim reluctantly agreed to go to Germany with Bernhardt, and Captain Francisco Arranz, staff chief of Franco’s minuscule Air Forces.⁶² The plan was facilitated by the arrival in Tetuán on 23 July of a Lufthansa Junkers Ju-52/3m mail plane which, on Franco’s orders, Orgaz had requisitioned in Las Palmas on 20 July. The Bernhardt mission was a bold initiative by Franco which would make him the beneficiary of German assistance and constitute a giant step on his path to absolute power.

When the party arrived in Germany on 24 July, Hitler was staying at Villa Wahnfried, the Wagner residence, while attending the annual Wagnerian festival in Bayreuth. The delegation was rebuffed by Foreign Ministry officials in Berlin fearful of the international repercussions of granting aid to the Spanish military rebels. However, they were welcomed by Ernst Wilhelm Bohle, the head of the Auslandorganisation who enabled them to travel on to Bavaria and provided a link with Rudolf Hess which in turn gained them access to the Führer.⁶³ Hitler received Franco’s emissaries on the evening of 25 July on his return from a performance of Siegfried conducted by Wilhelm Fürtwängler. They brought a terse letter from Franco requesting rifles, fighter and transport planes and anti-aircraft guns. Hitler’s initial reaction to the letter was doubtful but in the course of a two hour monologue he worked himself into a frenzy of enthusiasm, although noting the Spanish insurgents’ lack of funds, he exclaimed, ‘That’s no way to start a war’. However, after an interminable harangue about the Bolshevik threat, he made his decision. He immediately called his Ministers of War and Aviation, Werner von Blomberg and Hermann Göring, and informed them of his readiness to launch what was to be called Unternehmen Feuerzauber (Operation Magic Fire) and to give Franco twenty aircraft rather than the ten requested. The choice of name for the operation suggests that the Führer was still under the influence of the ‘Magic Fire’ music which accompanies Siegfried’s heroic passage through the flames to liberate Brünnhilde. Göring, after initially expressing doubts about the risks, became an enthusiastic supporter of the idea.⁶⁴

Ribbentrop’s immediate thought was that the Reich should keep out of Spanish affairs for fear of complications with Britain. Hitler, however, stuck to his decision because of his opposition to Communism.⁶⁵ The Führer was determined that the operation would remain totally secret and suggested that a private company be set up to organize the aid and the subsequent Spanish payments. This was to be implemented in the form of a barter system based on two companies, HISMA and ROWAK.^* Although not the motivating factor, the contribution of Spanish minerals to Germany’s rearmament programme was soon a crucial element in relations between Franco and Germany.⁶⁶

It has been suggested that Hitler also consulted Admiral Canaris, the enigmatic head of the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence. The dapper Canaris knew Spain well, having spent time there as a secret agent during the First World War, and spoke fluent Spanish. It is unlikely that he was at Bayreuth during the Bernhardt visit, but it is certainly true that once Hitler decided to aid Franco, Canaris would be the link between them, much to the irritation of Göring. He was regularly sent to Spain to resolve problems and in the process established a relationship with Franco.⁶⁷ Canaris quickly began to oversee German aid to Spain, from 4 August liaising with the recently promoted General Mario Roatta, the flamboyant head of Italian military intelligence. They agreed at the end of the month that Italian and German assistance would be channelled exclusively to Franco.⁶⁸

Despite Mola’s endeavours, Franco had emerged as the man with international backing.⁶⁹ The differences between their approaches to the Germans were significant. Franco’s emissaries had direct links with the Nazi Party, arrived with credible documentation and relatively ambitious requests. Mola’s envoy, José Ignacio Escobar, had neither papers nor specific demands other than for rifle cartridges. He had to seek out old contacts within the conservative German diplomatic corps which was hostile to any adventurism in Spain. On the basis of the information before the German authorities, Franco was clearly the leading rebel general, confident and ambitious, while Mola seemed unprofessional and lacking vision.⁷⁰ Franco’s own aspirations glimmered through his mendacious statement to Langenheim that he presided over a directorate consisting of himself, Mola and Queipo de Llano.⁷¹

Hitler’s decision to send twenty bombers to Franco helped turn a coup d’état going wrong into a bloody and prolonged civil war, although it is clear that Franco would eventually have got his men across the Straits without German aid. Ten of the Junkers Ju-52/3m, together with the armaments and military fittings of all twenty, embarked by sea from Hamburg for Cádiz on 31 July and arrived on 11 August. The other ten, disguised as civilian transport aircraft, flew directly to Spanish Morocco between 29 July and 9 August. All were accompanied by spare parts and technicians.⁷² On 29 July, a delighted Franco telegrammed Mola ‘today the first transport aircraft arrives. They will go on arriving at the rate of two per day until we have twenty. I am also expecting six fighters and twenty machine guns.’ The telegram ended on a triumphant note, ‘We have the upper hand (Somos los amos). ¡Viva España!’. All arrived but one, which blew off course and landed in Republican territory.⁷³

Despite the consequent intensification of the Nationalist air-lift, there was considerable exaggeration in Hitler’s much-quoted remark of 1942 that ‘Franco ought to erect a monument to the glory of the Junkers Ju-52. It is this aircraft that the Spanish revolution has to thank for its victory.’⁷⁴ The Ju-52 was only one part, albeit a crucial one, of the airlift. What is equally remarkable at this stage of the military rebellion is Franco’s unquenchable optimism which not only kept up morale among his own men but also consolidated his authority with his fellow rebels elsewhere in Spain. In Burgos, Mola was in despair at the delay in getting the Army of Africa to the mainland. He telegrammed Franco on 25 July that he was contemplating a retreat behind the line of the river Duero after his initial attack on Madrid had been repulsed. With characteristic firmness and optimism, Franco replied: ‘Stand firm, victory certain’.⁷⁵

On 1 August, Franco again telegrammed Mola: ‘we will ensure the successful passage of the convoy, crucial to the advance’.⁷⁶ On 2 August, accompanied by Pacón, Franco flew to Seville to galvanize the preparations being made by Colonel Martín Moreno for the march on Madrid which was to begin that day.⁷⁷ He could see that, even with the Italian and German transport aircraft, the airlift was far too slow. His plan for a convoy to break the blockade had been scheduled for 2 and then 3 August but cancelled. So, on returning to Morocco on 3 August, Franco held a meeting of his staff to fix a new date for the flotilla to make its dash across the Straits. Franco insisted that the troop convoy go by sea from Ceuta at dawn on 5 August despite concerns about the risks expressed by Yagüe and the naval officers. Convinced that the Republican crews were ineffective, Franco side-stepped the objections.⁷⁸ He knew too that the Republican navy would be inhibited by the presence of German warships which were patrolling the Moroccan coasts.⁷⁹ Accordingly, he sent another reassuring telegram to Mola on 4 August.⁸⁰

On the morning of 5 August, air attacks were launched on the Republican ships in the Straits and the convoy set out but was forced back by thick fog. Meanwhile, Franco telephoned Kindelán in Algeciras and asked him to request the British authorities at Gibraltar to refuse access to the port to the Republican destroyer, Lepanto. This request was met and the Republican ship was allowed only to let off its dead and wounded before being obliged to leave Gibraltar. The convoy of ferry boats and naval vessels with three thousand men again set forth in the late afternoon, watched by Franco from the nearby hill of El Hacho. Air cover was provided by the two Dornier flying boats, the Savoia-81 bombers and the six Breguet fighters. The Republican vessels in the vicinity, incapable of manoeuvring to avoid air attack, made little effort to impede their passage. The success of the so-called ‘victory convoy’ brought the number of soldiers transported across the Straits to eight thousand together with large quantities of equipment and ammunition.⁸¹

The convoy’s success was a devastating propaganda blow to the Republic. The news that the ruthless Army of Africa was on the way depressed Republican spirits as much as it boosted those in the Nationalist zone. By 6 August, there were troop-ships regularly crossing the Straits under Italian air cover. The Germans also sent six Heinkel He-51 fighters and ninety-five volunteer pilots and mechanics from the Luftwaffe. Within a week, the rebels were receiving regular supplies of ammunition and armaments from both Hitler and Mussolini. The airlift was the first such operation of its kind on such a scale and constituted a strategic innovation which redounded to the prestige of General Franco. Between July and October 1936, 868 flights were to carry nearly fourteen thousand men, 44 artillery pieces and 500 tons of equipment.⁸²

At this time, Mola made a significant error in the internal power stakes. On 1 August, heir to the Spanish throne, the tall and good-natured Don Juan de Borbón, the third son of Alfonso XIII, arrived in Burgos in a chauffeur-driven Bentley.^* Anxious to fight on the Nationalist side, he had left his home in Cannes on 31 July, despite the fact that on that day his wife Doña María de Mercedes was giving birth to a daughter. Mola ordered the Civil Guard to ensure that he left Spain immediately. The fact that he did so abruptly and without consultation with his fellow generals revealed both Mola’s lack of subtlety and his anti-monarchist sentiments. The incident contributed to deeply monarchist officers transferring their long-term political loyalty to Franco.⁸³ In contrast, when Franco later took a similar step, preventing Don Juan volunteering to serve on the battleship Baleares, he was careful to pass off his action as an effort to guarantee that the heir to the throne should be ‘King of all Spaniards’ and not be compromised by having fought on one side in the war.⁸⁴

Two days after the successful ‘victory convoy’, Franco flew to Seville and established his headquarters in the magnificent palace of the Marquesa de Yanduri.⁸⁵ Marking a clear distinction with Queipo’s more modest premises, the palace’s grandeur revealed more about Franco’s political ambitions than his military necessities. He began to use a Douglas DC-2 to visit the front or travel to meet Mola for consultations.⁸⁶ In Seville, he began to gather around him the basis of a general staff. Apart from two ADCs, Pacón and an artillery Major Carlos Diaz Varela, there were Colonel Martín Moreno, General Kindelán and, a recent arrival, General Millán Astray.⁸⁷ This reflected the fact that finally he had an army on the move.

Even before the ‘victory convoy’, Franco had already, on 1 August, ordered a column under the command of the tough Lieutenant-Colonel Carlos Asensio Cabanillas to occupy Mérida and deliver seven million cartridges to the forces of General Mola. The column had set out on Sunday 2 August in trucks provided by Queipo de Llano and advanced eighty kilometres in the first two days. Facing fierce resistance from untrained and poorly armed Republican militiamen, they took another four days to reach Almendralejo in the province of Badajoz. Asensio’s column had been followed on 3 August by another column led by Major Antonio Castejón which had advanced somewhat to the east and on 7 August by a third under Lieutenant-Colonel Heli Rolando de Tella. Franco telegrammed Mola on 3 August to make it clear that the ultimate goal of these columns was Madrid. After the frenetic efforts of the previous two weeks to secure international support and get his troops across the Straits, Franco’s mood was euphoric.

Franco placed Yagüe in overall field command of the three columns. He ordered them to make a three-pronged attack on Mérida, an old Roman town near Cáceres, and an important communications centre between Seville and Portugal. The columns advanced with the Legionaires on the roads and the Moorish Regulares fanning out on either side to outflank any Republican opposition. With the advantage of local air superiority provided by Savoia-81 flown by Italian Air Force pilots and Junkers Ju-52 flown by Luftwaffe pilots, they easily took villages and towns in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, El Real de la Jara, Monesterio, Llerena, Zafra, Los Santos de Maimona, annihilating any leftists or supposed Popular Front sympathisers found and leaving a horrific trail of slaughter in their wake. The execution of captured peasant militiamen was jokingly referred to as ‘giving them agrarian reform’. After the capture of Almendralejo, one thousand prisoners were shot including one hundred women. Mérida fell on 10 August. In a little over a week, Franco’s forces had advanced 200 kilometres. Shortly afterwards, initial contact was made with the forces of General Mola.⁸⁸ Thus, the two halves of rebel Spain were joined into what came to be called the Nationalist zone.

The terror which surrounded the advance of the Moors and the Legionaries was one of the Nationalists’ greatest weapons in the drive on Madrid. After each town or village was taken by the African columns, there would be a massacre of prisoners and women would be raped.⁸⁹ The accumulated terror generated after each minor victory, together with the skill of the African Army in open scrub, explains why Franco’s troops were initially so much more successful than those of Mola. The scratch Republican militia would fight desperately as long as they enjoyed the cover of buildings or trees. However, they were not trained in elementary ground movements nor even in the care and reloading of their weapons. Thus, even the rumoured threat of being outflanked by the Moors would send them fleeing, abandoning their equipment as they ran.⁹⁰ Franco was fully aware of the Nationalists’ superiority over untrained and poorly armed militias and he and his Chief of Staff, Colonel Francisco Martín Moreno, planned their operations accordingly. Intimidation and the use of terror, euphemistically described as castigo (punishment), were specified in written orders.⁹¹

Given the iron discipline with which Franco ran military operations, there is little possibility that the use of terror was merely a spontaneous or inadvertent side effect. There was little that was spontaneous in Franco’s way of running a war. On being informed of the bravery of a group of Falangist militiamen in capturing some Republican fortifications, Franco ordered them to be shot if they ever again contravened the day’s orders, ‘even though I have to go and place the highest decorations on their coffins’.⁹² In late August, Franco boasted to a German emissary of the measures taken by his men ‘to suppress any Communist movement’.⁹³ The massacres were useful from several points of view. They indulged the blood-lust of the African columns, eliminated large numbers of potential opponents – anarchists, Socialists and Communists whom Franco despised as rabble – and, above all, they generated a paralysing terror.

He wrote Mola on 11 August an extraordinarily significant letter, revealing his expectations of a quick end to the war, his strategic vision and the colonial mentality behind his views on the conquest of territory. He agreed that the priority should be the occupation of Madrid but stressed the need to annihilate all resistance in the ‘occupied zones’, especially in Andalusia. Franco mistakenly assumed that the early capture of Madrid would precede attacks on the Levante, Aragón, the north and Catalonia. He suggested that Madrid be squeezed into submission by ‘tightening a circle, depriving it of water supplies and aerodromes, cutting off communications’. Crucially, in the light of his later remarkable diversion of troops away from Madrid, he ended with the words: ‘I did not know that [the Alcázar of] Toledo was still being defended. The advance of our troops will take the pressure off and relieve Toledo without diverting forces which might be needed’.⁹⁴

At the time that Franco’s letter was being written, Mola was complaining about the difficulties of liaison.⁹⁵ Telephone contact between Seville and Burgos was established immediately after the capture of Mérida. The two generals spoke on 11 August. Apparently oblivious to any eventual political implications, Mola agreed with Franco that there was no point duplicating his successful international contacts and therefore ceded to him the control of supplies. Mola’s political allies were appalled at his naïvety. José Ignacio Escobar asked him if he had therefore agreed on the telephone that the head of the movement be Franco. Mola replied guilelessly, ‘It is an issue which will be resolved when the time comes. Between Franco and I there are neither conflicts nor personal ambitions. We see entirely eye-to-eye and to leave in his hands this business of the procurement of arms abroad is just a way of avoiding a harmful duplication of effort.’ When Escobar insisted that this made Mola the second-in-command as far as the Germans were concerned, he brushed aside his remarks. The control of arms supplies guaranteed that Franco and not Mola, with all the attendant political implications, would dominate the assault on the capital.⁹⁶

After the occupation of Mérida, Yagüe’s troops turned back south-west towards Portugal to capture Badajoz, the principal town of Extremadura, on the banks of the River Guadiana near the Portuguese frontier. Although encircled, the walled city was still in the hands of numerous but ill-armed left-wing militiamen who had flocked there before the advancing Nationalist columns. Many were armed only with scythes and hunting shotguns. Most of the regular troops garrisoned there had been called away to reinforce the Madrid front.⁹⁷ If Yagüe had pressed on to Madrid, the Badajoz garrison could not seriously have threatened his column from the rear. It has been suggested that Franco’s decision to turn back to Badajoz was a strategic error, contributing to the delay which allowed the government to organize its defences. Accordingly, Nationalist historians have blamed Yagüe but the decision smacks of Franco’s caution rather than Yagüe’s frenetic impetuousness. Franco made all the major daily decisions merely leaving their implementation to Yagüe. He had personally supervised the operation against Mérida and, on the evening of 10 August, received Yagüe in his headquarters to discuss the capture of Badajoz and the next objectives.⁹⁸ He wanted to knock out Badajoz to clinch the unification of the two sections of the Nationalist zone and to cover completely the left flank of the advancing columns.

On 14 August, after heavy artillery and bombing attacks, the walls of Badajoz were breached by suicidal attacks from Yagüe’s Legionarios. Then a savage and indiscriminate slaughter began during which nearly two thousand people were shot, including many innocent civilians who were not political militants. According to Yagüe’s biographer, in ‘the paroxysm of war’, it was impossible to distinguish pacific citizens from leftist militiamen, the implication being that it was perfectly acceptable to shoot prisoners.⁹⁹ The Legionarios and Regulares unleashed an orgy of looting and the carnage left streets strewn with corpses, a scene of what one eyewitness called ‘desolation and dread’. After the heat of battle had cooled, two thousand prisoners were rounded up and herded to the bull-ring, and any with the bruise of a rifle recoil on their shoulders were shot. The shootings went on for weeks thereafter. Yagüe told the American journalist John T. Whitaker, who accompanied him for most of the march on Madrid, ‘Of course, we shot them. What do you expect? Was I supposed to take four thousand Reds with me as my column advanced racing against time? Was I expected to turn them loose in my rear and let them make Badajoz Red again?’.¹⁰⁰ In fact, the savagery unleashed on Badajoz reflected both the traditions of the Spanish Moroccan Army and the outrage of the African columns at encountering a solid resistance and, for the first time, suffering serious casualties. In retrospect, it can be seen that the events of Badajoz might have been taken to anticipate what would happen when the columns reached Madrid. The clear lesson was that the easy victories of the Legionarios and Regulares in open country were not replicated in built-up cities. This was not widely perceived in the Nationalist camp but the stiffening of Republican resistance does seem to have dented Franco’s earlier optimism.

The distant cloud of potential difficulties at Madrid could hardly dim Franco’s appreciation of the benefits won at Badajoz. Now, crucially, there was unrestricted access to the frontier of Portugal, the Nationalists’ first international ally. From the beginning, Oliveira Salazar had permitted the rebels to use Portuguese territory to link their northern and southern territories.¹⁰¹ It was access to Portuguese help which, as much as any other factor, had decided Franco to swing his columns westwards through the province of Badajoz rather than the more direct route along the main road from Seville to Madrid, across the Sierra Morena via Córdoba.^*102

On 14 August, General Miguel Campins, Franco’s one-time friend and second-in-command at the Academia General Militar de Zaragoza, was tried in Seville for the crime of ‘rebellion’. The court martial was presided over by General José López Pinto. Campins was sentenced to death and shot on 16 August.¹⁰³ His crime was to have refused to obey Queipo’s demand on 18 July that he declare martial law in Granada and to have delayed two days before joining the rising. Franco was unable to overcome the determination of Queipo de Llano to have Campins shot. According to Franco’s cousin, despite refusing Queipo’s order, Campins had in fact telegraphed Franco putting himself under his orders. Franco wrote a number of letters to Queipo requesting that mercy be shown to Campins. Queipo simply tore them up but Franco did not push the matter further for fear of undermining the unity of the Nationalist camp.¹⁰⁴ According to his sister Pilar, Franco was upset by the death of his friend.¹⁰⁵ Queipo’s determination to execute Campins despite pleas for mercy reflected both his brutal character and his long-standing loathing of Franco. Franco took his revenge in 1937 by ignoring Queipo’s own pleas for mercy for his friend General Domingo Batet, who was condemned to death for opposing the rising in Burgos.¹⁰⁶

While Campins was being tried and shot, Franco made a cunning move which boosted his stock in the eyes of Spanish rightists at the expense of his rivals in the Junta. In Seville on 15 August, flanked by Queipo, he announced the decision to adopt the monarchist red-yellowred flag. Queipo acquiesced cynically, reluctant to draw attention to his own republicanism. Mola, who barely two weeks before had expelled the heir to the throne, was not consulted. Only with acute misgivings did General Cabanellas sign a decree of the Junta de Defensa Nacional two weeks later ratifying the use of the flag.¹⁰⁷ Franco had managed to present himself to conservatives and monarchists as the one certain element among the leading rebel generals. It was a clear indication that while the others thought largely of eventual victory, Franco kept a sharp eye on his own long-term political advantage.

In fact, Mola and Franco were worlds apart in both political preferences and in temperament. In the words of Mola’s secretary José María Iribarren, Mola ‘was neither cold, imperturbable nor hermetic. He was a man whose face transmitted the impressions of each moment, whose stretched nerves reflected disappointments’.¹⁰⁸ Mola himself seemed totally oblivious to security, strolling around Burgos alone and in civilian clothes. His headquarters were chaotic with visitors wandering in at all times.¹⁰⁹ Queipo de Llano was equally casual about visitors. In contrast, Franco had a bodyguard and the tightest security arrangements at his headquarters. Visitors were searched thoroughly and during interviews with Franco, the door was kept ajar and one of the guards kept watch via a strategically placed mirror.¹¹⁰

Those who did get in to see him did not find a daunting war lord. Many aspects of Franco’s demeanour, his eyes, his soft voice, the apparent outer calm struck many commentators as somehow feminine. John Whitaker, the distinguished American journalist, described him thus: ‘A small man, his hand is like a woman’s and always damp with perspiration. Excessively shy, as he fences to understand a caller, his voice is shrill and pitched on a high note which is slightly disconcerting since he speaks very softly – almost in a whisper.’¹¹¹ The femininity of Franco’s appearance was frequently, and inadvertently, underlined by his admirers. ‘His eyes are the most remarkable part of his physiognomy. They are typically Spanish, large and luminous with long lashes. Usually they are smiling and somewhat reflective, but I have seen them flash with decision and, though I have never witnessed it, I am told that when roused to anger they can become as cold and hard and steel.’¹¹²

Franco certainly had heated arguments in Seville with Queipo de Llano who had difficulty concealing his contempt for the man who was below him in the seniority scale. In contrast, Mola remained on good terms with Franco.¹¹³ A German agent reported to Admiral Canaris in mid-August on the view from Franco’s headquarters. The report showed the wily gallego subtly consolidating his position and confirming the fears of Mola’s supporters that he had sold the pass to Franco on 11 August. The agent’s report stated that German aid must be channelled through Franco.¹¹⁴ Mola continued to recognize Franco’s superior position in terms of foreign supplies and battle-hardened troops. Their correspondence in August shows Franco as the distributor of largesse in terms of financial backing and military hardware. Franco could boast of the fact that foreign suppliers made few if any demands upon him in terms of early payment. He could offer to send Mola aircraft.¹¹⁵

On 16 August, Franco, accompanied by Kindelán, flew to Burgos where Mola could not have failed to notice the manic fervour with which his comrade was received by the local population. A solemn high mass was said in the Cathedral by the Archbishop.¹¹⁶ At dinner that night, Franco’s optimism about the progress of the war was as unshakeable as ever. The only glimmer of anxiety came in a comment to Mola that he was worried that he had had no news of his wife Carmen and his daughter Nenuca.¹¹⁷ After dinner, Franco and Mola spent several hours locked in secret conclave. Although no decision was taken, it was obvious to both of them that the efficient prosecution of the war required a single overall military command.¹¹⁸ It was obvious too that some kind of centralised diplomatic and political apparatus was necessary. Franco and his small staff were working ceaselessly to maintain foreign logistical support. The Junta de Burgos which used to meet late at night was also finding itself overwhelmed with work.¹¹⁹ Given Franco’s near monopoly of contacts with the Germans and Italians and the apparently unstoppable progress of his African columns, Mola must have realized that the choice of Franco to assume the necessary authority would be virtually inevitable. Franco’s staff had already loaded the dice by convincing German Military Intelligence that the victory in Extremadura had indisputably established him as ‘Commander-in-Chief’. Portuguese newspapers and other sections of the international press described him as ‘Commander-in-Chief’ presumably on the basis of information supplied by his headquarters. The Portuguese consul in Seville referred to him as ‘the supreme commander of the Spanish Army’ as early as mid-August.¹²⁰

Mola was gradually being forced towards the same view. On 20 August, he sent a message to Franco pointing out his own troops were having difficulties on the Madrid front and asking to be informed of Franco’s plans for his advance on the capital. In the event of Franco’s advance being delayed Mola would make arrangements to concentrate his activities on another front.¹²¹ The text of his telegram suggested less a deferential subordination to Franco’s greater authority than a rational desire to co-ordinate their efforts in the interests of the war effort. Mola was not thinking in terms of a power struggle but three days later he was brutally made aware of the extent to which Franco was consolidating his own position. On 21 August, Mola received a visit from Johannes Bernhardt in Valladolid. Bernhardt came with the good news that an anxiously awaited German shipment of machine-guns and ammunition was on its way by train from Lisbon. Mola’s delight was severely diminished when Bernhardt said to him ‘I have received orders to tell you that you are receiving all these arms not from Germany but from the hands of General Franco’. Mola went white but quickly accepted the inevitable. It had already been agreed with General Helmuth Wilberg, head of the inter-service commission sent by Hitler to co-ordinate Unternehmen Feuerzauber, that German supplies would be sent only on Franco’s request and to the ports indicated by him.¹²²

After the capture of Badajoz, Yagüe’s three columns had begun to advance rapidly up the roads to the north-east in the direction of the capital. Tella’s column had moved to Trujillo on the road towards Madrid while Castejón’s column had raced towards Guadalupe on Tella’s southern flank. By 17 August, Tella had reached the bridge across the Tagus at Almaraz and shortly afterwards arrived at Navalmoral de la Mata on the borders of the province of Toledo. Castejón’s column would capture Guadalupe on 21 August. Castejón, Tella and Asensio would join together on 27 August before the last town of importance on the way to Madrid, Talavera de la Reina. In two weeks, they had advanced three hundred kilometres.¹²³

Despite these heady successes, Franco’s telegram in reply to Mola suggested that his unflappable optimism was beginning to be eroded by Republican resistance. He made it clear that, on the advance to Talavera de la Reina, he feared strong Republican flank attacks at Villanueva de la Serena and Oropesa. ‘A well-defended town can hold up the advance. I’m down to six thousand men and have to guard long lines of communication. Flank attacks limit my capacity for movement.’ He outlined to Mola the next stages of the push, on to the important road junction at Maqueda in Toledo, then from Maqueda diagonally north-east to Navalcarnero on the road to Madrid.^*124 Within a month, the bold and direct strategy outlined to Mola would be abandoned in the interests of ensuring that Franco would be the undisputed Generalísimo.

^* Antonio Goicoechea, the head of Renovación Española, the intellectual Pedro Sáinz Rodríguez, the Conde de Vallellano, José Ignacio Escobar, owner of the monarchist newspaper La Época, the lawyer José María de Yanguas y Messía and Luis María Zunzunegui.

^* German equipment would be imported to Spain by the Compañía Hispano-Marroquí de Transportes (HISMA) set up on 31 July by Franco and Berhardt and Spanish raw materials imported into Germany by the Rohstoffe-und-Waren-Einkaufsgesellschaft (ROWAK) created on 7 October 1936 at the initiative of Marshal Göring.

^* Alfonso XIII’s eldest son, Alfonso, was afflicted by haemophilia and had formally accepted the loss of his right to the throne in June 1933 when he contracted a morganatic marriage with Edelmira Sampedro, the daughter of a rich Cuban landowner. The King’s second son, Jaime, immediately renounced his own rights on the grounds of a disablement (he was deaf and dumb). Jaime would, in any case, have lost his rights when, in 1935, he also married morganatically an Italian, Emmanuela Dampierre Ruspoli, who although an aristocrat was not of royal blood. Alfonso died in September 1938 after a car crash in Miami.

^* Assuming that Franco would attack through Cordoba, and believing the Yagüe columns to be engaged only in local operations, the Republican General Miaja had concentrated his exiguous defensive forces on the Córdoba-Madrid line.

^* The Francoist military historian, Colonel José Manuel Martínez Bande, has seen this message as the first sign of Franco’s decision to relieve the Alcázar de Toledo. His view is based entirely on the presence in the message of the words: ‘Maqueda-Toledo’, which he arbitrarily takes to mean ‘relief of the Alcázar’. However, the rest of Franco’s text shows rather that after Maqueda the column would make a continued thrust to Madrid in a direct line to Navalcarnero rather than make any diversion to Toledo.