Our report of August 1938 to the Government of the Republic concerning the conduct of the war—A critical-military review

Those who had not sworn to any secret commitment to do what they could to see to it that the war would have a disastrous end, that is, honest people, of a liberal and progressive spirit, capable of a modicum of reflection, those who had preserved a minimum of independent personality, understood that the situation was grave, that the inevitable could not be postponed forever by lying to the public, that there was an urgent need for an effective remedy for the general orientation of government policy and especially military policy. We could not resign ourselves to merely revealing to our militants a reality that so many people had such a major interest in concealing. It was not possible for us to appeal to the masses to try to convince them to put a thousand kinds of pressure on the government. Largo Caballero’s attempt to do so a few years earlier had led him to house arrest. It was not as if we were afraid of this or any other eventual outcome, but in that regime not even personal sacrifice could achieve any positive results.

On more than one occasion, the government press, and almost the entire press was the government press, insinuated that many people had been imprisoned or shot for lesser crimes than we were guilty of committing. And in these same articles it was claimed that it was merely due to the generosity of the government that we were allowed to walk the streets at all.

And this was true, many decent Spaniards had been shot or imprisoned for lesser causes. We also exposed this fact as just one of the many reasons why the worst government that Spain had ever known for many centuries should be brought to trial and punished.

What we said in our publications, what we told our militants, what we discussed in a small circle of friends, we also said clearly to the government itself. On August 20, 1938 we sent a report to the Chief of State that should have either been heeded or at least led to our immediate imprisonment.[33] The response to our report was eloquent silence.

This same document was also sent, for information purposes, to the former Ministers of War, to the high level military commanders, and to the parties and organizations that supported the government. Despite the silence of the majority, our incontrovertible arguments and criticisms would eventually be accepted by many people as a result of developments that soon thereafter transpired in accordance with our predictions.

We shall introduce our text with some comments we received from various recipients of the report.

Largo Caballero (September 1) told us:

… The document seems good to me, and most especially your proposed solutions, which I would endorse without any hesitation.

Indalecio Prieto, another former Minister of War, said:

I have read the document with great interest. It is, of course, extremely interesting. All those who are now vested with the responsibility to direct this conflict should meditate on the observations set forth in its pages.

The level-headed approach to the study of the difficult problems of the war, and the high level from which this vast panorama is contemplated, are praiseworthy. You may be sure of my gratitude and my best wishes…. (September 4)

General Rojo himself, the Chief of Staff of the General Staff, who had been profoundly affected by our observations, had to admit that:

… the document is undoubtedly of the greatest interest and although I had already been briefed as to its contents by the Prime Minister, I am very grateful that I have received a copy. Concerning this report, I will only say that I agree with many of its points, whose orientation I believe is correct and beneficial for the war effort, and many of which have already been repeatedly formulated by this General Staff in certain proposals…. (September 1)

Luis Araquistain (August 31) told us, among other things:

I congratulate the author or authors on the technical competence revealed by the work and for the civic act of exposing crimes, anomalies and abuses that are so intolerable and disastrous that if they are not rapidly corrected, they will lead us, as you say quite well, to ultimate disaster. It is very sad that such a magnificent display of intelligence and of the Spanish character, understood properly, will not come to the attention of all Spanish anti-fascists and independent minds.

Colonel Díaz Sandino (September 2):

I have read the document and, sincerely, it is very gratifying to tell you that no honorable criticism has ever been more correct, or more just or true. I can only congratulate you. It would have been necessary for an organization or a party to have the courage to say these things, and since you took the initiative, I will not spare my praise….

Colonel Jiménez de la Beraza (September 3):

I was thrilled to be acquainted with the robust moral courage that underlies your analysis of the political activity that has been the principal cause of our military misfortunes and the inactivity in which men who are efficient in the military sense and absolutely loyal and trustworthy have been maintained….

Colonel Emilio Torres:

Many of the suggestions you make coincide with my own oral and written suggestions, and it is to be hoped that they will receive, on the part of the government, and insofar as they are practicable, the favorable welcome that their good intentions deserve. (September 11)

General José Asensio:

… I totally agree. I praise the conclusions, which encompass a complete program, without partisan distortions and without any other purpose than to defeat the enemy and to win the war and, with it, not just the independence of Spain, but liberty, justice and civil rights, which are the foundations of the organization and the well being of the people. (September 15)

There is a large amount of correspondence concerning this document. We have highlighted some of the most important statements made by well known political and military figures who cannot be suspected of sharing our revolutionary ideals. And now, we shall summarize the contents of the report, since its great length will not allow us to provide the full text.

We began by recognizing that the military progress of the enemy had been constant over the last two years of the war, involving the conquest of extensive territories and important cities in our provinces.

We can say that our army has done nothing up until this date other than resist with various degrees of success, and the offensives that we have mounted have almost always been neutralized by the enemy, which on most occasions has reconquered more land than was at first lost to our offensives, thanks to an important mobile strike force that we must ourselves form, to win the war, with twice as many troops as our enemies….

There can be no doubt that the leadership that we have conferred upon the conduct of the war in our camp suffers from serious defects, and our people’s army and its commanders, lacking training and competence and undermined for the most part by partisan politics, also exhibit these same defects.

There is therefore nothing to be gained by deceiving ourselves. To the contrary, we believe that it is worth the trouble to call attention to the errors we have made, in documents not intended for publication, backed up by our experiences in our campaign whose purpose is to see to it that these errors are corrected. Otherwise we can only hope for an international solution based on the mediation of our conflict, a mediation that would certainly be unfavorable for the Republic. Either this, or we must hope for the same old miracle that will save us from the final disaster….

Then we mentioned the causes that had led to such a difficult military predicament.

a) The absurd and pernicious influence of politics on the war.

First, upon the outbreak of the military uprising and its defeat in several major cities, and especially in Barcelona, instead of everyone sharing the same correct view of reality, it was believed by the majority of the parties and organizations that the conflict was more or less won, that it was just a matter of a few weeks or months and, consequently, each party and each organization began to concern itself with the future, with reinforcing its positions of dominance. They did not want to focus all available human and military material on the war. The infiltration of dubious elements in the ranks of anti-fascism also contributed to squandering our opportunities during the first few months when military initiative on our part was still possible.

Later, the politics of partisan hegemony in the rearguard caused our fighters to focus on defending the so-called conquests of the revolution, ignoring what was essential, which was the war, which was necessarily a revolutionary war. Parties and organizations devoted themselves to hoarding arms in the rearguard, for the purpose of dominating the postwar period that they thought was imminent, taking these arms from fronts that were unstable, badly organized and lacking the elements that had been removed from them.

Once these first mistakes had been partly rectified,

… a political party appeared in the spotlight, a party that had few members, which, relying on the policy of a foreign power, after carrying out an intensive propaganda campaign among the ranks of the army and in the institutions of public order, offering the bait of promotions and appointments to high level positions, which attracted neophytes whose anti-fascist credentials were hardly impeccable and who were morally deficient, many of whom it protected by giving them membership cards backdated to 1933, brazenly attempted to transform the people’s army into a creature of the party.

Proselytism by way of corruption, flattery, promotions, favoritism, and all kinds of coercive measures, even in the trenches, created an atmosphere of decomposition and discontent that undermined the morale and effectiveness of the military apparatus.

Using the most repulsive methods, these elements who were obeying the dictates of a foreign power seized control over the General Staffs and devoted themselves to slandering military officers who were not sympathetic to their party ideology, and replaced them with party members.

And because membership in this party does not by virtue of that fact alone confer any guarantee of ability, the army of the Republic has been given, with the knowledge and consent of its leadership, a large number of commanding officers who lack the personal experience and technical knowledge required for the management, which has so often been entrusted to them, of large units.

Some of these commanding officers have introduced arrogance and discourteous treatment as aspects of their leadership style. Despite always having the word “comrade” on their lips, they have never felt comradely in their hearts, since they have even restored corporal punishment in the army, often employing it to discredit the revolution. And despite the formation of authorized military tribunals, they have even gone so far as to secretly shoot people and harrass individuals in complete violation of military law.

The interference of politics in the war has reached such an extreme that it interrupted operations that might have otherwise been decisive to save northern Spain, at a time when the enemy did not possess the Italo-German and Moroccan manpower that it possesses now. In this case, this interference successfully prevented the victory that would have meant a veritable political El Dorado for a certain public figure, without anyone pausing to consider whether or not this harmed the cause of the Spanish people, which cannot be the patrimony of any particular party or made the victim of schemes and cults of personality.[34]

It can be said that everything that has since been undertaken, especially with regard to the composition of military units and appointments to commanding positions, has been done solely to serve political purposes; it is under such conditions that our war is waged….

b) The Commissariat of War

When the military uprising first broke out and we improvised an organizational framework for fighting the war, when all the military resources were in our hands, not knowing which professional elements to whom we should entrust the command over our columns, we resorted to the appointment of political section leaders or commissars who, accompanied by military officers who were more or less sympathetic and trustworthy, exercised control over military operations.

It was the only advisable procedure under the circumstances. We could not leave the commanding positions in the hands of personnel with whom we were not familiar, and we had to restrict appointments to commanding positions to those military leaders who had declared their support for the people in arms. It was a measure imposed by circumstances, until the situation became more clear. Shortly afterwards, officers of revolutionary and popular origin began to graduate from our military schools, and many of our militiamen proved to be excellent military commanders at the front, such as Durruti in Catalonia, Cipriano Mera in the Center, Higinio Carrocera in Asturias, etc. The intervention of a dual apparatus that was both political and military was useless, if not harmful; not to mention the poison of proselytism that was its fuel and vehicle.

We said to the Government of the Republic:

In good military doctrine, the man in command must be everything to the soldier, who must see him as a paternal friend, a faithful administrator, and a teacher who guides the soldier in every way (and who even teaches him to read), providing him with an apprenticeship in culture and social life. If an officer does not have these traits, he must be removed from the ranks of the army, but the solution does not lie in placing a commissar at his side to make sure that he demonstrates them, or as is almost always the case, to see to it that he does not demonstrate them.

The soldier must see the man in command as a superior person who can effectively lead him in the tragic and terrible experience of battle. He must see the officer as a model and an example, in whose hands the supreme sacrifice of life must be placed. Life cannot be risked arbitrarily, no matter how just the cause that is defended. Sacrifice must be crowned with victory, that is, with the occupation of the objective designated by the commanders. Dual command has never existed in history, since even in the era of the Roman Senate, the two consuls who were named alternated in the exercise of military command.

Some military operations were disrupted in their development by absurd ideas imposed by thoughtless commissars. On other occasions the commissars denounced military commanders with a notorious flippancy, motivated by resentment and partisan ambitions….

With the commissariat, an enormous and byzantine bureaucratic machine has been created within our army that has no obvious military use….

We used to complain about the enormous burden represented for our country by 22,000 officers on active duty. We should calculate the impact on our future of, in addition to the 45,000 officers that we have now in our army, another 45,000 commissars….

This institution, therefore, not only does not contribute in its current form to the successful prosecution of the war, but actually hinders it due to its interference, with the political proselytism that is carried out in favor of a party and with its lack of tact and of military knowledge….

In certain units, the commissars have been noted to meet with the officers who support certain ideologies, and with the cells that were formed everywhere, to allocate the units’ commanding positions. Furthermore, commissars have participated in executions carried out in defiance of military law, an extremity that it is precisely their mission to prevent, as the custodians of the safeguarding of military order….[35]

c) The military advisers from the USSR and the use of the air force

We did not want to address the famous aid received from the USSR. This aid was all paid for, at market prices and without any discounts, regardless of the quality of the materiel we received in exchange. That is all well and good, but at most all that was required of us was prompt payment and all the gratitude our supplier wanted.

However [we said to the Government], we think that our identity should not be mortgaged and that the Republic, and we, the Spanish people, should not abandon the lead role in conducting our government policy and our war. The USSR has sent to our country numerous teams of more or less experienced and discreet military technicians of various degrees of professional competence. Some of them eventually demanded that they be obeyed, and others have worked to place staff officers and field commanders who are members of a certain kindred party in positions of command and on the General Staff of our army, so they can dictate their orders to them; they also show preference and indulgence for units that they consider to share their own ideology, and neglect for those which they consider to be influenced by other parties or organizations.

This is proven by the fact that there are divisions in our army professing the communist ideology that possess more artillery, a machine gun battalion, and another battalion armed with submachine guns, with better armaments, a field hospital and their own surgical equipment and free hands for their commanders to obtain supplies of all kinds….

[As we were told by Hilario Esteban:]

The part about the commissariat is right on target and I hope that it is taken into consideration, since the commissar has forgotten his proper function and everything else in order to serve the party that nominated him for the position of commissar. There have been many occasions when these partisan intrigues have yielded disastrous results for army units. (Hilario Esteban, Coordination Section of the Regional Committee of Catalonia of the CNT, September 1)

The commissar of the 72^nd Division, Antonio Barea, told us:

Furthermore, I totally agree; so much that when I read some of your statements (for example, those referring to the commissariat, the Russian advisers, the SIM) it seems that I am reading something that I wrote myself.” (September 18)

This is the secret behind the fact that they [the communist units] are more capable of resisting the enemy than other, similar units. Operations that amounted to stupendous disasters were ordered and implemented by some of these advisers from the USSR, concerning whom we sincerely believed that we could ask them for moral and material support and even technical advice, but in whose not always skilled hands—although the members of the communist party, with an admirable provincialism, think otherwise—the executive decision making of the campaign must never be placed….[36]

Lieutenant colonel Jover maintained that,

… we can by no means consent to being replaced by foreigners…. With our patient efforts, we must compel all those who want to fight against fascism at our side to behave like Spaniards and to become Spanish; then we shall see….

For our part, we worked with many members of the military teams sent from the USSR and we have been able to observe their one-track way of thinking and their almost total lack of ability to solve unforeseen problems. That is why, generally speaking, when an operation did not work out as planned, they were confused and left the planning of measures to rectify their failed operations to chance. And as for the colonels and generals they sent us to serve as technicians in the art of waging war, they were no better, and this is saying a lot, than the average level of any of our half-trained captains.

The air force we possessed was completely in the hands of the commanders from the USSR, an extreme solution easily understandable due to the special conditions of the air arm, as distinct from those of the land army, and we had even formed numerous contingents of magnificent Spanish pilots, and we manufactured several planes each week in our factories. Our air force, however, was not used effectively, since we did not have the tactical support planes that could work in cooperation with the armies, perhaps due to a lack of trained pilots.

We can state that our infantry never feels that it has sufficient support from the air force, which has never operated in concert with the land forces, in contrast to the way our enemies use their air force. No real efforts are made to engage in aerial observation, nor are any photographic charts compiled, nor are operational plans updated, nor are the enemy’s efforts to build fortifications being monitored, nor is there any attempt, in short, to perform the real work that should be performed by the air force in a modern war.

The air force is, as the famous saying has it, “the eyes of the army” and the “left hook of the boxing match of the commanders”. And we regret to say, from this point of view, we find ourselves, in the people’s army, very nearly totally blind, and that our commanders can only use the right uppercut of the artillery in their boxing match.[37]

d) An atmosphere of suspicion haunts the military commanders

There has been a tendency to create, without intending to do so, by the rumors spread by commissars and local committees, agents of the SIM, agents of the parties, etc., an atmosphere of real suspicion around numerous military commanders. It can be stated that our intelligence sections know very little about the enemy, but instead know a lot of gossip, most of it unfounded, concerning the officers of the army who are not members of the party that holds the key positions in these intelligence sections or predominates among their informants. An apolitical Napoleon Bonaparte commanding a major corps in our people’s army would surely be dismissed if he had a commissar or a cell from a certain party in his general headquarters. On the other hand, false military prestige has been fabricated for ignorant and inexperienced individuals, precisely on the basis of the complicity of cells and commissars.

Under these conditions a moral climate has been generated that is far removed from a healthy and noble environment of exemplary comradery that should be the rule among the loyalist officer corps, and it is in this factor that the cause of many routs, military disasters and the lack of good commanders must be sought….

If we could dispassionately read the dossiers compiled against the noncommunist staff officers and field commanders, we would behold a monstrous and irresponsible intrigue that turned our army into a soulless and inconsistent mass.

e) Shirkers and morale behind the lines

There are far too many cases of complicated intrigues, and recommendations sparing certain people from front-line duty, and ultra-revolutionary figures in the rearguard accomplish the impossible by evading their military obligations after receiving their conscription notices.[38]

And among the commissars, personnel destined for pseudo-industrial, auxiliary, engineering services, etc., removed from the ranks more than thirty percent of their number.

Nor were these the only ways to evade one’s military duties.

In May 1937 we had a large surplus of armed men, a real reserve army that today, despite a series of additional military drafts, we no longer possess. These men were used disproportionately to reinforce units performing the services of public order and the treasury police that could have been performed by other, nonmilitary, bodies. These units composed of young men who had been mobilized should have been assigned to the fronts and should have constituted the reserve armies.

Exemptions from service at the front, for political reasons, for those who are said to be indispensable for civil administration, those assigned to war industries, those who are included in the conscription classes that were mobilized to fill up the ranks of the carabineros, the uniformed security corps, the SIM and the police, produce a great deal of discontent among the front line soldiers and their families. All these things should be rectified with a strong hand and with impartiality. An example: a few days ago, the undersecretary for propaganda of the communist party was mobilized as a war industry worker, and it is from that position that he serves his party by disseminating tons of communist propaganda.

Another factor that is conducive to demoralization is the fact that on the home front, the only ways to get food are to have money or to be a member of a party or organization characterized by its support for the government or the USSR.

We then referred to the lie of the apoliticism of the army and the scandalous way that almost everything that was essential for the conduct of the war effort was controlled by the communist party and by the Russian advisers. And then we summarized what was accomplished by Catalonia for the war effort and for the manufacture of military products, in response to the campaign of calumny waged by the Moscow-oriented press, pointing out that this ignorance of such an unparalleled force could only sow the seeds of bitterness and cynicism in a region that is vital for the future of the war.

We devoted one section of our text to the executive command of military operations, and to the critique of the Teruel campaign, initiated under extremely unfavorable circumstances for us. One division was missing three thousand men, and there were artillery batteries that had only one gun. We had on our side the advantage of surprise, a concentrated focus of action, and the fact that the offensive capacities of the enemy were at that time directed towards Guadalajara, but faced with the enemy’s counteroffensive, our army’s defective operational planning became obvious in general as well as with respect to the details. The demoralization of the units that surrendered also testified to the failure of the military policy that had been followed up until that point.

f) Disregard for the idiosyncrasies of the the Spanish people

We have sketched the outlines of what a people’s army, rather than a party or a fraction, must be. Now, we would like to refer to another form of armed struggle that is known throughout the world as the Spanish-style or guerrilla war. Even the very word “guerrilla” has passed into the vocabulary of every language as a synonym for irregular warfare. Currently it is the Chinese who are revealing the real prospects of this kind of war.

The guerrilla is consubstantial with the Spanish temperament, with Spain’s broken terrain, with its mountains and ridges and its natural fortifications. The militias that were formed during the first few months of the conflict had this character; but the lack of a regular army caused us to use them as regular forces and this largely explains their failures and those of their commanders. The militias as free undertakings, autonomous, with bold volunteers, with no other discipline than that imposed by the needs of the moment, would have been able to accomplish for our victory as much or perhaps more than the army. They would have paved the way for the regular forces with their decisive victories, they would have been everywhere, harrassing the enemy with surprise attacks, interrupting the enemy’s supply lines, causing unexpected losses, sowing unease and nervousness in its ranks.

The Government of the Republic would have been able to more effectively organize the army from the very start if it had not been forced to employ these organized forces in operations for which they did not have sufficient training. The direct or indirect cooperation between guerrillas and regular forces would have given this war a different course. Guerrillas or cuerpos francos have arisen in every war and have been encouraged by every school of military thought. The Russian Revolution was able to defend itself from its enemies not with the embryonic Red Army, but with brave guerrillas like Makhno, Chapaev and thousands of others who were less well-known. Our current war is the first time that guerrilla tactics have been totally eliminated.

But while it is true that guerrillas and cuerpos francos have been fostered by the military and civilian authorities in all times and in all countries, nowhere more than in Spain have they played such a decisive role. It was the volunteer and popular guerrilla forces that sealed the fate of the Napoleonic armies on our territory; and it was the guerrillas who decided the first Carlist war that lasted seven years in favor of the system that seemed less despotic and backward to the people.

The complete suppression of the people’s militias, which could have performed auxiliary services behind the lines and could have focused their main action on surprise attacks, infiltrating enemy territory, and a thousand sporadic, yet disruptive, actions against the invaders, has deprived us of an active vehicle for the support of the people and has taken from our hands a precious instrument for effective cooperation with the army.

So much for the critical part of our statement. In what follows we offer some solutions. We proposed four urgent, preliminary measures:

1. A complete overhaul of the highest echelons of military operations and war policy. As long as no decision is made to expel the volunteers as requested by the Non-Intervention Committee, then Spanish commanders should be appointed to lead the International Brigades. No foreigner should occupy any position of command or responsibility in the army, in the air force or in the navy. The Russian advisers will desist from their independent operations and will become members of the General Staffs, subordinate to Spanish supreme commanders. Interpreters will be provided by the Government.

2. Reestablishment of strict military discipline. This entails as a consequence the severe punishment of illegal acts and the incompetence of the commanders, whether or not they are protected by a particular political party.
   For example, the officer who, with pistol in hand, forced an artillery unit to fire its guns at a faster rate than the equipment would permit, thus damaging and rendering inoperative several guns, should be punished; and so, too, should anyone who robs or loots the country that he occupies; or anyone who shoots someone illegally; or anyone who exceeds his authority and who is not trained for or capable of exercising the command functions for which he is appointed to serve, notwithstanding the sanctions that are set forth in the military code for treason or cowardice for all the members of the army.

3. The strict delineation of the functions of the commissariat of war, so that it is no longer capable of infringing upon the authority and responsibilities of the military command structure.

4. A radical reform of the SIM. This military investigation service merits a separate discussion:

There can be no doubt that it has committed useless acts of cruelty, for which we justly reproached Martínez Anido, employing methods “to make people talk” that have been renounced by all the police forces in the world. It is also true that it has been responsible for the defects of bad police methods, which imprison all the residents of a block to arrest one thief. Despite some successes achieved by this service, its ineffectiveness is obvious. The Fifth Column exists in all its enormity, and the enemy’s espionage services set up by the Gestapo and the OVRA operate freely on our territory, and concerning the enemy we are totally in the dark with regard to intelligence….

It is a notorious fact that this service, which can avail itself of such extraordinary intellectual refinement and skill, has since the outbreak of the war not been in the hands of a sufficiently skilled leadership, since, taking into account the fact that enemy territory offers a favorable environment for this kind of work and the ease with which we could infiltrate agents who speak the same language as our enemy in rebel territory, it would have been entirely practicable to carry out large-scale plans similar to those carried out by the various secret services during the world war.

Indiscriminate terror is not a weapon that can benefit our cause. The selection of ignorant and inexperienced agents can only lead them to justify their paychecks by generating mere gossip that is far removed from the great mission that must be performed….

As for what must be done to win the war, the Government knew as well as we did, but we nonetheless believed that it was necessary to openly state it in so many words:

A victorious outcome, achieved strictly by military means on the battlefield, is not to be expected today, nor can we envision such a result taking into account the means at our disposal, our difficulties, our mistakes and also taking into account the fact that we are fighting the war with draftees who are married men or veritable children, who are facing Moors, Legionnaires, adventurers and fanatics whom the enemy uses as assault forces and storm troops….

If military victory was impossible, however, the enemy nonetheless had his Achilles Heel, the home front of the rebels that was liable to decomposition and demoralization. Naturally, a revolt in the enemy’s rearguard was not to be expected to result from mere propaganda. Several factors had to be combined in addition to propaganda campaigns, for example, a complementary activity of propaganda in Morocco, a more effective and consequential military policy and more extensive use of irregular warfare.

For us, the infiltration of a network of agents into enemy territory, speaking the same language, familiar with the political and military life of the country, of the national psychology, capable of inspiring the proletariat and the so-called democratic sectors to rise up against the invaders, sowing discontent by means of a skilfull dissemination of news and by repeated acts of sabotage, would pose no problem. We proposed the following operations:

1. The division of rebel-held territory into operational zones.

2. The assignment of agents to each zone.

3. The systematic infiltration of these agents and their joining the parties of the rebel side.

4. Ensure the transmission of reports, orders and news in enemy territory and from enemy territory to loyalist Spain.

5. Each zone should possess at least one chief agent, one or more for each political party, responsible for transmitting and executing orders, propaganda, etc., one central clearing house of news and means to disseminate it, and one or more saboteurs.

6. In each division of the rebel army we should be able to rely on at least one agent of our secret service, and if possible one in every newspaper, Ministry or important agency or organization.

The first five points we considered to be applicable to Portugal as well, and it was our opinion that they should even be extended to Italy.

A coordinated propaganda campaign and an attempt to foment rebellion in the rebel zone, coinciding with an equivalent campaign in Morocco and with a stunning military victory on our part, might have been able to facilitate the victory of our cause.

We proposed to introduce the seeds of decomposition and demoralization in the zone of the Moroccan Protectorate as well, in Ifni and the Spanish Sahara, aware of the fact that the Islamic world is always prone to exaltation and revolt against its oppressors.

The Kabiles of Northern Morocco are impoverished, exhausted and have suffered numerous casualties as a result of the war….

Xenophobia has always prevailed among Moslems and especially among the tribes of the Maghreb. As for the regions bordering on, or located in, the desert, their inhabitants are constantly prone to indulge in passionate, mystical movements, besides the fact that warfare and a nomadic way of life have always been the usual occupations of the natives, which is why we think that it would be very easy to spur them to rise up against the foreigner, playing on both the religious sentiments and the xenophobia of the masses, and the petty ambitions of the most influential men in their Yema’as or assemblies….

We emphasized the strategic importance of the Sahara and the southern part of Morocco for communications with South America, and we proposed that we should come to some kind of agreement with France regarding this project, and with the Pan-Islamic Committee in Geneva, with the high level Zionist leaders in London and Paris, with the Moroccan Jewish elements, with the main religious brotherhoods and with prestigious local figures.

We called attention to the advisability of establishing groups of skilled agents, knowledgable in Arab culture, in Uazzan, Fez, Tazza and Uxda, for the North, and in Marrakesh, Agadir and San Luis in Senegal for the South, whose mission would be to:

1) gather intelligence; 2) spread suitable news and rumors among the tribes; 3) work to attract influential persons to our cause; 4) obstruct the recruitment and the training of native units; 5) bombings and sabotage; 6) smuggle and distribute arms; 7) start a revolt in the country and attack enemy organizations and military camps.

The distribution of money, weapons and ammunition was the most adequate means to achieve our ends.

Our proposal combined these activities in rebel territory and in Morocco with an inexpensive campaign on the part of our army that was guaranteed to succeed. We recognized that we did not possess the means or the manpower for offensives like the one whose purpose was to recover the regions of Lérida, Gandesa or Vinaroz, or to cut the line of communications between Teruel and Guadalajara, to straighten out the Madrid Front, to recover the Valley of the Serena for the purpose of subsequently occupying the communications node of Mérida, for the reduction of the Bujalance or the Alcalá la Real pockets so as to later reach Granada. Our objective was more accessible and was a long way from the Ebro and Levante, where our enemies had concentrated their reserves. Our objective was the Pozoblanco sector.

In the chosen zone, we find the mining region of Peñarroya to be an objective of extraordinary importance of every kind, whose possession would allow us to threaten Córdoba from very close positions and to make communications between that province and Estremadura extremely difficult.

The situation of the troops that the enemy has been forced to station in this region is quite unfavorable tactically due to the positions they occupy and due to the ease with which they can be isolated, with a river behind them (the Guadiato), and squeezed into its valley…. Strategically speaking, the enemy occupies the northern wall of a veritable dead end, formed by the Guadiato, which flows behind their positions from Northwest to Southeast, from the swamps of Calderín passing through the Sierra de Chimorra, Sordo, Alcornocosilla, Cabeza Mesada and positions facing Hinojosa. The northern wall of the dead end only offers possibilities of communications as far as Villaviciosa.

The rest of the region is completely impassable for retreat or for supplying the rebel forces, which necessarily have to rely on the Córdoba-Villaharta-Belmez and Peñarroya highway for supplies, which passes through the same dead end formed by the river. To the Northwest, the enemy can easily communicate with Estremadura and to the Southeast with Córdoba.

Of the two basic maneuvers exclusively used by strategy, which consist of cutting the opposing army into two, or encircling it, in this case it is reasonably clear that among the numerous aspects and nuances with which the military art adorns them, faced with such a strategic situation, only encirclement can be applied….

Our report then provides further details concerning this proposed campaign, and the requirements for its successful implementation.[39]

We must point out with respect to this matter that in our proposals of actions to be taken we did not expect our suggestions to be followed to the letter, but we only sought to delineate possible solutions we might ourselves have modified once we put them into practice depending on the changing day-to-day situation.

Then we highlighted the possible significance of a guerrilla war behind enemy lines, combined with action in northern and southern Morocco, and with a military campaign of the kind we proposed, along with an effective campaign of propaganda, intelligence and sabotage in the enemy zone.

Now we shall summarize what a sensible military policy would have looked like.

Military policy must be of a solely technical nature, establishing a unity of action and of the will to achieve the greatest efficiency in the use and coordination of naval, air and ground forces.

Specifically, this policy must involve the use of the military forces, the choice of theaters of operation, the distribution of forces and manpower among them and a military system to be employed in each case, without any interference at all, just as such interference is not allowed in scientific research or technological research and development, of the ideologies and policies of parties, or of the aspirations of particular classes.

And among the practical measures we proposed certain measures that were indispensable for the implementation of our critical suggestions, including the reduction to the absolutely necessary minimum of the forces of public order and of the Ministry of Finance, the Treasury Police [Cuerpo Único] and the carabineros, so that the Ministry of War would have authority over all the members of these units that are incorporated into the mobilized conscription categories. The other armed bodies that serve as policemen, prison guards, labor camp guards, traffic police, etc., would also be subject to having some of their armed personnel mobilized for active service at the front. We also called attention to the need for a “policy of personal and collective responsibility for those who participate in public life as civil servants or as representatives of parties and trade unions”.

We did not in any way seek to diminish the scope of the sacrifices, privations and austerities imposed by the war; but we did oppose an absurd policy that was inspired much more by the idiotic ambitions of partisan dominance than by the goal of winning the war. We ended our text with the following words:

More than two years of experience are more than enough to enable us to determine which road leads to military defeat. We have tried to show which one this is. And we have proposed the needed corrections.

Enemies of partisan politics with respect to these questions, and above all when our existence as an independent nation is at stake, we want nothing, we are not asking for anything, that cannot be advocated by all the political and trade union forces.

We rose up in July 1936 to take the first steps to prevent the establishment of a dictatorship. We still think that dictatorship cannot be an instrument of progress and prosperity for Spain, and we also think that it cannot bring us victory in the war.

We are proposing a democratization of public power to the exclusion of all partisan hegemony. We are proposing that loyal Spaniards do not renounce the leading role in conducting the war or commanding the forces that are fighting it. A Spain without any identity of its own cannot fight with all the potential of which it is capable for its own dignity and for its own independence.

We shall repeat what we said on other occasions. It is not with pride, but with shame and profound bitterness that we now summarize the position of the Iberian Anarchist Federation in the Spanish tragedy. It seems incredible that we stood entirely alone in taking a position that was by no means extremist, but which rather, to the contrary, perhaps erred by being too moderate. We asked for nothing for ourselves. We only wanted to win the war, to see the cause of the Spanish people more fully understood and more effectively defended.

If, on an individual level, face to face, we were told that we were right, when it was a question of parties and organizations, they turned their backs on us and joined forces with the strategists of defeat. Fear? Complicity? Let each of them clarify the motives that led them to unconditionally support a figure like Dr. Negrín, a man without any qualifications and without any experience, viewed by the people as a mere tool of the foreign policy of a supposedly friendly power, but in fact the gravedigger of the Spanish war and revolution.