July 1937

Until the middle of 1937 the war had been primarily defensive. The failure of the first major offensive at Brunete, in July 1937, was one of the first in a continuing series of military disasters. The Brunete campaign was the brainchild of the senior communist officers and their Soviet military advisers who, for international propaganda purposes, wanted a major offensive in the western sector of Madrid. The decision led to escalating dissatisfaction among the officers and men of the Popular Army and the International Brigades. The ‘May Days’ and other Soviet-inspired machinations had seriously eroded their morale and a number of units of the International Brigades openly mutinied in protest against their manipulation for propaganda purposes by the Comintern and the incompetence of the general staff. Although the Brunete offensive was claimed by the communists as a major victory, by 24 July the nationalists had recaptured most of their lost ground, including Brunete. The Republic gained some fifty square kilometers at a cost of 25,000 casualties.

On 21 July, seven German anarcho-syndicalists, probably from the DAS (Deutsche Anarcho Syndikalisten) centuria of the Durruti Column, imprisoned in the monastery of Santa Ursula smuggled out a letter to Pierre Besnard, secretary of the IWMA (AIT), the anarcho-syndicalist International, complaining of illegal imprisonment:

“…They treat us as spies and accuse us of having been in contact with the Gestapo during the events of May in Barcelona. This is an absurdity and we must not wonder that it has taken them months to concoct this abominable charge. There are 150 of us held prisoner in the Santa Ursula monastery, about 60 per cent of us foreigners, Germans for the most part… on 29 July we embark upon a hunger strike. Our interrogators are Spaniards but the commissars are always Russians and Germans. Dear comrades, do not forget us. Greetings to all.” [112]