Yep, a charming fellow with a charming ideology and charming friends....
Posted on 04/06/2008 7:27:39 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Insurgent shock troops hammered at the defenses of Tortosa yesterday while other contingents spread out to blanket the east coast network of roads. Barcelona’s power supply was interrupted, presumably because of capture of bombardment of a hydroelectric station.
In the face of the menacing situation the Loyalists reorganized their Cabinet, with Premier Negrin emerging as the strong man charged with carrying on the war and Communist representation reduced to one. Simultaneously the government has intensified its activity against spies.
France, expecting a heavy influx of refugees from Spain shortly, reinforced her border guards.
In the wake of the warfare came a story of how a tiny band, a goodly part of it Canadians, in the retreat near Gandesa had held of f the Insurgents by a boisterous show of fire.
WITH THE INSURGENTS, at Gandesa, Spain, April 3. – Insurgent troops swarmed down from the high coastal sierras today to doom the Spanish Government’s last highway link between Catalonia and Madrid.
While shock troops were demolishing the last government defenses at Tortosa, near the Ebro River’s mouth, General Garcia Valino’s army spread rapidly along broad coastal highways into Castellon and Tarragona Provinces.
Detachments swept the secondary road net east of the main Morella-Gandesa highway, capturing Fuentespalde and other strategic villages. Northeast of Gandesa, toward Tarragona, the villages of Mora de Ebro, Miravet and Benisanet fell in rapid succession.
The strong opposition of government forces defending natural mountain positions melted as the Insurgent armies advanced seaward, overrunning a vast area.
In their retreat, government troops dynamited bridge after bridge spanning rivers and ravines. The cost of replacement will run into millions of dollars. They blew to bits stone bridges over the Matarrana and Algus Rivers between Caspe and Gandesa. Bridges on the highway between Alcaniz and Gandesa also were blasted.
The Insurgents announced that they had buried 7,554 government dead and captured 18,312 prisoners from March 9 to March 31 and had seized large amounts of military equipment. They destroyed or captured twenty-nine government tanks, they stated.
There was so little evidence of any kind of property damage that the town seemed to have been untouched by the scourge of war. All its 6,000 inhabitants not only appeared to have remained in the town, but were cheering and fraternizing with the Nationalist [Insurgent] troops that occupied it yesterday.
General Miguel Aranda, as usual, was full of pride in his seasoned Galician infantry and in General Jose Huarte Monasterio’s mountain-climbing cavalry. These are entirely Spanish units and include no mixed Italian and Spanish divisions. The latter at present are operating near by in the Tortosa sector.
The same forces carried out the difficult conquest of mountainous Asturias under General Aranda’s direction last Fall. They are definitely not mechanized units, but are completely at home in this high rugged country.
General Aranda explained that the same enveloping manoeuvre that was used with such consistent success in the mountains along the Cantabrian coast as well as on Aragon’s plains enabled his Gallegos to capture Morella without any destructive artillery and aerial bombardments. Just as easily, that most vital of road centers, Valderrobres, was taken a few days ago, also without resorting to the “tremendous material superiority” which Barcelona, by way of explaining its recent reverses, now claims the Nationalists possess.
General Aranda observed that the ancient castle dominating the town undoubtedly was impregnable in the fourteenth century and “would still be if we had to attack it with bows and arrows.”
The forces under General Garcia Valino tonight were reported within ten miles of Tortosa. These troops are converging near the village of Cherta from three directions. One column is moving down the western bank of the Ebro River from the village of Pinell. Another is advancing down the western side of the Gandesa road between the villages of Prat and Pauls. The third is pushing due east from the village of Alfara, near Mount Espina in the Sierra de Las Razas.
Meanwhile another section of General Garcia Valino’s troops had advanced northeast of Gandesa along the Tarragona road to Mora de Ebro, only ten miles from the important town of Falset.
This writer revisited Gandesa today and found most of its civil population had returned to their homes from hiding places in the mountains. Religious services also have been resumed in the old church there, although all its original furnishings were carried off, allegedly by retreating International brigades commanded by Major Lister.
With his right flank better protected by yesterday’s capture of Asco and Flix in the Ebro valley northeast of Gandesa. General Juan Yague today pressed on northeast of Lerida up the Segre valley toward Balaguer, capturing Corbins on the main road to Puigcerda on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.
General Jose Moscardo’s troops also pushed steadily toward the French frontier in the sector east of Boltana and north of Benabarre, capturing the village of Campo last night.
PERPIGNAN, France, April 5. – French Mobile Guards have already arrived at the Franco-Catalan border in anticipation of an early Loyalist collapse. To cope with the expected influx of Spanish soldiers and refugees the French guards have been distributed at the principal frontier points from Andorra to the sea.
Military authorities here believe the exodus will be made along the three principal highways leading from what is still Loyalist territory to France, with the heaviest traffic over the Puigcerda-Bourg-Madame route. Other routes are the Portbou-Cerbere road and Andorra road.
Even if Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Rebel navy is able to bottle up Barcelona harbor, a certain number of refugees are likely to enter Port Vendres, France, aboard foreign warships.
Several dozen trucks that left here some days ago to load oranges at Valencia returned today, empty. The drivers explained they had been turned back at Barcelona because the road south had been cut.
A mass flight of Loyalist ranks would be possible at present over the Puigcerda road, where, this afternoon in any case, only two youths - one in a Guardia Civil uniform, the other in nondescript garb - were guarding the Spanish side of the border. The roar of guns could be heard distinctly though intermittently at that point.
The Portbou (Spain) exit is held by a strong detachment of carabineros, who would be able to check even a fairly strong column of deserters. The Andorra roads are still snow-blocked, although French Mobile Guards now guarding the mountain republic’s security are clearing all the highways.
Mountain tops are still snow-covered, and trails and paths are passable only by trained mountaineers.
PERPIGNAN, France, April 5 (AP). – French frontier officials prepared today for a possible migration of 100,000 Catalonians fleeing into France from Spain’s civil war.
Raoul Didkowski, Prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees Department, said thorough precautions had been taken on the French side of the frontier to handle a flood of refugees. All who do not agree to enter Insurgent territory will be sent to French refugee camps.
French troops were understood to be ready to move from here and Toulouse to reinforce Mobile Guards.
The first stream of refugees dried up after 7,612 – of whom 5,460 were Spanish Government militiamen – had plodded across the snowy mountains to Bagneres de Luchon last week. The troops have been sent back to Spain and the civilians to French camps.
This is open warfare with a vengeance. In many cases Insurgent patrols or cavalry columns will enter a town in the morning and the Loyalists will visit it in the afternoon. That is happening particularly in places along the east bank of the Ebro River. The Insurgents, for instance, had the Hospitalet road under machine-gun fire near Tivisa this morning, but that whole road was in government hands.
What newspaper men here still wanted more than anything else today was further news about the Fifteenth [International] Brigade. However, there is nothing new that can be added to the story told yesterday by members of the American Lincoln-Washington Battalion. The bulk of that battalion still has not shown up.
Today’s news concerns the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion. Once again that crack battalion of Canadians and Americans carried on the traditions of the Internationals.
This writer has referred several times recently to that rear-guard action in the hills behind Gandesa that permitted the safe withdrawal of thousands of men by holding the Insurgents back from the Tortosa road for a whole day. There were hardly more than 150 men who performed that feat, and fifty of them were “Macpaps.”
Your correspondent got the story today from Captain Wattis, who commanded them. He is an Englishman, a regular army man, who saw service in the World War and he is chief of staff for his brigade.
When the break-up of the brigade came he and others fought and infiltrated through to the other side of Gandesa. There he gathered around him all foreigners and Spaniards of the International Brigades that he could find. There were Germans of the Eleventh Brigade, French from the Fourteenth, British, Americans and Canadians from the Fifteenth and Spaniards from all three. Fifteen of them were members of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion.
They took up a position on a ridge completely dominating the Tortosa highway. The Insurgents could not get by without smashing them. The defenders had rifles and one machine gun, but no extra ammunition and of course no food or water.
Heavy Attacks Stopped.
The Insurgents cut loose at them with everything they had, which meant heavy and light artillery, tanks in waves and columns of men. But the defenders beat back everything. Six tank assaults were driven off, which was a considerable feat, considering that no anti-tank guns were available.
Captain Wattis kept his men back of the ridge during the repeated artillery barrages, leaving just two observers behind. When the observers saw the Insurgents coming at them they signaled, and the Loyalists rushed to the crest, giving it to the advancing foe with rifles and that lone machine gun. And back they went.
It was a contest against time, of course, for the position was not tenable in the long run. But if they could hold out until dark, they were safe. One can imagine how they watched that sun and how slowly it sank for them.
When it did sink, the commander could congratulate himself on the amazing fact that his casualties at the end of the day consisted of four wounded.
Then came their retreat. With dusk they started back, but ten riflemen remained behind, firing as fast as they could and throwing hand grenades at random to give the impression of a large force there. Grenades were also to be thrown under Insurgent tanks if these came on.
A small group of Assault Guards had joined the Loyalists late in the afternoon, comporting themselves as well as all the others. Captain Wattis also had been able to get word back and have one medium-sized tank sent up for support. That tank played the last role of the day, remaining after the ten riflemen ran back and throwing shell after shell into Gandesa.
When day dawned, the Insurgents doubtless charged the ridge, only to find the Loyalist force had retired.
Captain Wattis took his men down the road to Cherta. Then, seeing a column of Insurgents marching down the west bank of the Ebro in the distance, he marched his own men out quickly, getting them across a ford at Benifallet.
That was the group, with additions, that was coming down the road from Rasquera when this writer was there yesterday. Now, like all men of the Internationals, they have rejoined their divisions and are ready to fight again.
Newspaper men saw them in temporary rest billets, where the captain told his story. Sitting over against the side of the house was a group singing lustily. One refrain ran “We’ll hang General Franco on the sour apple tree.” Another, to the tune of “Hinky dinky, parley voo,” commenced, “Franco said he’d take Madrid, parley voo.”
Captain Wattis smiled at us.
“You know,” he said, “that singing is the greatest compliment paid to me in twenty-three years of soldiering.”
He had just received the congratulations of Commander Modesto of the Fifth Army Corps to the “bravos muchachos” [“brave lads”] who had held the ridge over Gandesa.
Correspondents also heard about another group of “Macpaps.” It was an officer of the Eleventh Brigade who related that it was holding a tunnel south of Cherta and doing it so tenaciously that the Insurgents had been forced to move down, far away from the road into the open country. It is not possible yet to get details of that action.
About a hundred “Macpaps” appear accounted for. Men of the battalion are drifting in steadily from various points after having come through the Insurgent lines, so more of them as well as other members of the Fifteenth Brigade will almost surely be heard from in the next few days.
This correspondent drove down the coast road and up side roads again today, but without discovering much that was new.
The head of the stream of peasant refugees was just reaching Barcelona this morning. Carts in Spain bear plates with the names of their towns, and we saw them from Calaceite, Batea, Candesa, Calanda and many other places in that district where the break-through occurred Friday.
Those families had been on the road five days. They could have gone to the hills, returning when the Insurgent wave swept by, but they chose to flee with what little belongings they could carry, abandoning their homes. That may be a commentary on what the Spanish peasant thinks of the Insurgents.
BARCELONA, Spain, April 5. – Severe measures to cope with espionage, which recent events have demonstrated to be a problem quite as important as the military one, have just been taken by the Spanish Government and will be put into effect immediately.
By a series of decrees the machinery of investigation has been tightened and placed under military control. A halt has been called to the policy of commuting a majority of death sentences. Six persons, including a young woman, were executed at Montjuich Fortress as spies last Tuesday, in contrast to the occasional execution of one or two prisoners after death sentences have been reviewed.
The story behind the execution of the woman and two of her confederates has been veiled in some mystery, but yesterday this correspondent was permitted to consult the court records and obtain the facts.
The condemned were Carmen Tronchoni, 22 years old, a State employee; Jose Vielsa and Carlos Garcia, both majors in the regular army and professed Rebel sympathizers. The court drama concerned the men’s attempts to escape to Rebel-held Spain, the girl’s efforts to aid them and the net into which they unwittingly walked at the very moment they were congratulating themselves on their safety.
The girl worked in a government office at Valencia last year, and, being attractive, she was popular with men, the testimony revealed. This popularity proved her undoing. Suspicion was directed against her by the frequency with which she visited prisoners held as disloyal. She was placed under observation and it was learned that she often visited the Panama Legation at Valencia, where the two army men and a youth, Manuel Gonzales, were staying.
Vielsa had been attached to the army general staff in Madrid, while Garcia was a permanent military judge in that capital. They took refuge in the Panama Legation in Madrid when the rebellion broke out, and later they went to Valencia when the legation was transferred there.
The girl arranged to procure false passports for them, so they could leave the country. Police agents established contact with her, posing as Rebel sympathizers and confederates. The two officers and the youth, believing that the matter of their passports and safe departure had been discreetly arranged, left the Panama Legation of their own free will and came to Barcelona by automobile, accompanied by the girl and the secret police agents.
The men used false names. When put on trial they attempted to the end to deny their identity.
During the automobile trip to Barcelona, according to the evidence, the girl and her friends sang Fascist hymns and reviled governmental authorities, while they two officers revealed their plans to escape into Rebel territory for the purpose of offering their services. One of them, it was testified, boasted that the Rebels several times had got word to him by radio demanding his presence because of his technical ability. They also boasted of lists of government supervisors who were to be killed if and when the Insurgents arrived.
In Barcelona all went to a hotel to await the passports, and while there they were arrested. The court was more lenient with the youth, Gonzales, who was sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment, while the purveyor of false passports was let off with six years. It was testified in his behalf that he did not know that the passports he was to provide would have aided the Rebels.
It is charged here that the Rebels continue a policy of ruthless extermination of prisoners taken in Bilbao, Asturias and other captured territory. Captured Italian aviators, it is declared, have related that Republican fliers are killed on their capture, while the government charges that in Bilbao, Basque and Asturian prisoners have been executed in groups. The Minister of the Interior, in a recent statement, charged that during December 320 were executed at Bilbao and that thirty-one were killed in January. It is contended that in view of that circumstance there is no reason why clemency should be shown to Rebel sympathizers.
Six priests on trial at Gerona on charges connected with the rebellion have been absolved by a Popular Tribunal. After their acquittal the president of the court delivered a eulogy of popular justice, while the priests were effusive in expressing thanks, according to a dispatch from Gerona.
PARIS, April 5. – Spanish civilian refugees who have received a haven in France are being distributed in different cities of France, which formerly harbored refugees from San Sebastian and Bilbao.
There still remain a number of children’s colonies for Bilbao refugees, but in general the children have been repatriated. All whose families could be traced have been sent to rejoin their parents either in Spain or in France in the case of the limited number of Basque refugees who have been permitted for various reasons to establish residence here.
Some Basque children, notably orphans, have been taken in charge by Catholic organizations in France. The great majority of the Basque children, however, have been sent back to Spain.
The Spanish Insurgents keep moving forward.
Reply #2 is another story by Herbert L. Matthews, and it sounds a little implausible:
The defenders had rifles and one machine gun, but no extra ammunition and of course no food or water. . . The Insurgents cut loose at them with everything they had, which meant heavy and light artillery, tanks in waves and columns of men. But the defenders beat back everything. Six tank assaults were driven off, which was a considerable feat, considering that no anti-tank guns were available.
Those must have been some pretty crappy tanks.
Reply #3Concerns the fate of Insurgent spies caught by the Loyalists. "Fascist Hymns?" Somebody remind me - who are the good guys in this struggle?
German tanks in the Spanish Civil War were Mark Is [twin MGs in the turret], and the Mark II[i mg, ix 29mm cannon]. Both were very luightly armored. Although the Germans used them [in incewasingly diminishing roles] in 1940, and 1941; they were being superceded by the Mark III[50mm cannon, and the Mark IV[75 mm howitzer, replaced w/ longbarrel 75mm gun], as well as the t38 [Czech model] p-anzer.
Italian tanks were either tankettes [like Bren carriers, but far less robust] or tanks that should have, in Italian, been called the equivalent of ‘crap’. Italian tanks in North Africa had sandbags in them to stop enemy rounds.
They could have gone to the hills, returning when the Insurgent wave swept by, but they chose to flee with what little belongings they could carry, abandoning their homes. That may be a commentary on what the Spanish peasant thinks of the Insurgents. . .
On the other hand:
The condemned were Carmen Tronchoni, 22 years old, a State employee; Jose Vielsa and Carlos Garcia, both majors in the regular army and professed Rebel sympathizers.
God bless Franco.
Let's see, before Franco invaded the Republicans were executing priests and monks, raping and murdering nuns, looting churches, taking over private businesses and in imprisoning the owners and managers.
Then Franco's troops invaded and began to systematically execute all mayors, town councilmen, union leaders, anybody who was denounced by anybody who owned a blue shirt (Spanish blood feuds can go back a long time) and oh yes, almost of anybody they captured who had a bruise on their right shoulder.
Good guys? What good guys.
Yep, a charming fellow with a charming ideology and charming friends....
Corrections: The Mark II had one machinegun and a 20 mm cannon.
“luightly”= “lightly”
“incawasingly”= “increasingly”
NEED COFFEE!!!
When you have Communists fighting Fascists, who do you root for? Nobody. However, most of the loyalists were not Communists (despite the fact that Communists eventually took over the movement), and many of the rebels weren’t fascists. Atrocities abounded on all sides.
“Those must have been some pretty crappy tanks.”
Found it! They were Soviet T-26 tanks, several hundred shipped by Stalin to the Loyalists:
http://libraryautomation.com/nymas/soviet_tank_operations_in_the_sp.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-26
Sorry, my mistake. Mis-read your comment. Thought you were talking about these tanks:
Insurgents claimed:
“They destroyed or captured twenty-nine government tanks, they stated. “
Those were the Soviet T-26s. Insurgents had German tanks, as already pointed out...
Don’t forget the Russian tanks! T-26 Infantry and BT-5 Cruiser. Much more heavily armed and armored than the German’s and Italian’s tankhttp://libraryautomation.com/nymas/soviet_tank_operations_in_the_sp.htms.
Hah Hah Quik draw!
Say what you will about Franco, but at least he allowed Spain to be a place for Jews to escape the Nazis.
Yep, a charming fellow with a charming ideology and charming friends....
I would not be among those who say, "God Bless Franco."
However, keep in mind the expressions of the two characters in your photo. Franco got everything he wanted from Hitler, and gave Hitler nothing that Hitler wanted in return.
In the photo, Adolph is plainly thinking, "I can't believe I let this little Spanish SH*T con me like this....."
Yeah, it makes for quite the mess.
Ever read Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia”?
PzKpfw I Ausf. A in Spain
Check out some pre WWII Italian armor here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/1280986/posts
Maybe not 100% of what he wanted.
A perusal of the captured German documents makes it plain that one of Hitler's purposes was to prolong the Spanish Civil War in order to keep the Western democracies and Italy at loggerheads and draw Mussolini toward him.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 297.
Couldn't Hitler have sent enough resources to Franco so that he could quickly overwhelm the Loyalists and end the war? Maybe that is a reason Franco stiffed Hitler on his requests for help taking Gibralter and thwarting the British in North Africa.
Yep, a charming fellow with a charming ideology and charming friends....
I repeat, "God bless Franco." He played the hand he was dealt brilliantly, and did what was best for Spain—and never betrayed the Church. He saved Spain from becoming the People's Republic of Spain, complete with gulags and genocide. By the time he started the nationalist rebellion, the Communists were enough in control of the show that a prominent feature of "Loyalist" government was that churches were closed and looted, priests and nuns were shot, and villagers who were suspected of being religious were executed with them.
Speaking of charming friends, the nationalists' enemies in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which included many Americans, were so devoted to the Communist Party that many of their prominent veterans supported Hitler themselves in 1940, when he made an alliance with Stalin—and opposed our preparations for war against the Nazis. Meanwhile, as others have pointed out, Franco got air support from the Germans, but never allowed German soldiers on Spanish soil, either, even when the Germans tried to call in their marker during WWII.
Franco went his own way in retaining loyalty to "Greater Spain," to the extent that he even remained on good terms with Castro (another charming friend). But he was a good steward of Spain, and turned it into a prosperous country, starting in the 1950s, when he developed it as a tourist destination.
Unfortunately, Spain includes many regions, such as Catalonia, which have the fanatical, Euro-suicide gene as the French do. So the country became very Lefty and nihilist after Franco died, and hasn't managed to face up to Islamic terrorism. But the night is still young. As long as there are Spaniards like King Juan Carlos, I will maintain hope. You remember his smackdown of that Venezuelan chimp:
"¿Por qué no te callas?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.