People :
Author : Diego Abad De Santillán
Text :
We had already addressed the anarchist militants (July 1938), we had told the government what we thought of the situation in general as it concerned the war without mincing any words (August 1938), and all that remained for us to do was to inform the entire libertarian movement, the National Confederation of Labor, the Iberian Anarchist Federation, and the Libertarian Youth; we did this in September of 1938, on the occasion of a National Plenum of the three libertarian organizations, held in Barcelona.[40] In our publications we had repeatedly insisted on the woeful contrast between the masses who were superior, for their qualities, their understanding and their constructive abilities, compared to their representatives. We noticed this fact even during the first days of the movement, and as time passed our view was only reinforced, both with respect to military affairs as well as economic and constructive aspects.
From the point of view of the course of events, it seemed to newcomers to the movement to be a little chaotic; but the human material was so excellent that it was seldom that appeals were made to the sentiment and the reason of the people in arms without achieving the most favorable results. Once those who made mistakes were sincerely and honestly shown that they were in error, they rectified them.
The logic of the people does not always coincide with the logic of their leaders. As a result of the victory of July, these leaders were at the mercy of the people, who were the masters of their own destinies, and of their own will. If this liberation was capable of instilling panic into the professionals rulers, if it gave rise to some individual excesses, if under the shadow of this liberty some bad seeds sprouted along with the good ones, the majesty of the sublime spectacle was not thereby diminished. As long as the people took the initiative into their own hands, leaving their political, military and trade union leaders behind, they did not yield one inch on the battlefield. To the degree that the people were deprived of their initiative, the constructive spirit in the economy, combativity and heroism at the front, the enthusiastic participation in all the foundations of life, of labor and of creation, all declined accordingly.
The Regional Plenum of the libertarian movement was an occasion for us to experience great sadness, not because our observations and our desires went unheeded, but because it became evident to us, once again, just how vast was the moral distance that separated the vast movement of the people who rallied around our flag from those who claimed to represent them, who availed themselves of all the arts that are so familiar all over the world and in every organization when leadership becomes a career and the possession of commanding positions is considered to be the supreme goal.
The so-called demands of the war had abolished the democratic functioning of the people’s institutions of management, criticism and planning. And was this a good thing for the conduct of the war? No, but it was good for those who, caught up in the gears of the system, were able to boast of jobs, sinecures, and positions for which they were not qualified and which they otherwise would have never been able to enjoy.
We consider it to be our duty to reproduce these documents, both in order to highlight our attitude that earned us isolation and the animosity of those whom we condemned, but also so that those who are the surviving victims of a suicidal policy that was implemented and presumably authorized in their names will have the opportunity to become acquainted with their contents.
The reader will perhaps notice that we shall repeat some facts and observations that we already quoted from other documents. It was the same spectacle and the same passion that inspired all our efforts.
How much we wanted to be proven wrong! And we must confess that on more than one occasion, having noted the futility of our efforts, and having seen how we were up against the solid and unyielding wall of the representatives of every party and organization, we experienced self-doubt. Perhaps we were the ones who were wrong? Let he who can, judge for himself, from a vantage point above all the passions that were aroused by this bitter dispute. We cannot be both judges and defendants. That is why we shall allow the documents to speak for themselves, to convey the expression of our discontent and of our view of each incident.
First, some general considerations.
We shall not attempt to render a detailed survey of our errors with regard to the war and military policy in general. We all bear some responsibility for these matters, at the front or behind the lines, due to our action or our inaction, in the turn taken by events and in the loss of our positions, insofar as we have played a leading role in this war and were also its first organizers.
The most efficient and adequate instrument of irregular warfare, of the Spanish style of warfare, was improvised, and arose as if by magic: the popular militias of the first few months of the war. Our lack of an organized army forced us to employ these forces in operations and for purposes ordinarily assigned to regular military units. To this discrepancy we must also add the lack of arms and ammunition, and the sabotage we had to deal with from the very start on the part of the Government of the Republic against these popular formations that had arisen in the midst of the victory of July.
We had to create an army, but did we also have to abolish the militias? Is it not true that these two kinds of military bodies have coexisted in the past, and that they performed different but nonetheless complementary functions in warfare?
The abolition of the militias was a political error from the revolutionary point of view and a military error from any point of view. What happened afterwards was merely the logical and necessary outcome of this first big mistake.
Without our support, militarization would not have been possible. Moral pressure alone, or Government decrees, would not have been enough to quell the discontent against, and diminish the instinctive spirit of resistance to, a militarization policy that had other purposes besides merely imposing discipline, as we saw later.[41] We lacked the insight to propose that the two formations should exist side by side, the regular formations of the army and the irregular formations of the people’s militias. We therefore placed our fate, and the fate of revolutionary Spain and of the war, in the hands of our natural and irreconcilable enemies, the usurpers of the so-called aid from Russia, which was not aid at all, but a scandalous business deal involving the sale of weapons that were often defective or useless, and a shameful exchange that surrendered control of the political affairs of Spain as well as the conduct of the war to a foreign power.
A campaign was waged in the ranks of the army to crush the best qualities of the Spanish soldier. The intention was to impose a brutal regime of discipline by way of terror. In order to further this project, huge armies of state police, Carabineros, Security and Assault Guards, ordinary police, the SIM [Military Investigation Service], etc., were formed. In 1930, in all of Spain there were 694 commanders and lower level officers of the Carabineros, 14,526 infantry troops, and 350 cavalry. Compare these figures with the 100,000 carabineros who are currently on the payroll in a territory that is so truncated that it covers only about one-fifth of our country. And this proportional increase in the number of carabineros has been more or less equaled by all the other forces of public order. Were the people who created these monstrous armies of policemen in the rearguard, which have always proven to be worthless when it came to fighting the enemy on the other side of the trenches, thinking of the necessities of the war, or were their actions instead motivated by their desire for political dominance?
There have been numerous shootings and assassinations; instances where qualified men were passed over for promotion or assignments, and where corporal punishment and court martials were inflicted on the best soldiers who dared to resist the dictatorship imposed on the ranks by order of Russia, and who protested against the stupid mistakes and the catastrophic campaigns that uselessly squandered lives and blood for objectives that served exclusively political interests.
We have had almost two years of experience with militarization. Ever since the commanding heights of the republic’s military affairs were placed in the hands of the usurpers of the so-called aid from Russia, we have experienced nothing but defeats on the military fronts, ruinous blunders on the economic terrain, and loss of prestige in international affairs, and we have also witnessed the demoralization of our soldiers that necessarily led to such disasters as the collapse of the Aragon Front and the subsequent routs in Levante and Estremadura.
What follows are some excerpts from the report submitted by comrade Gil Roldán, recently appointed Commissar of the Armies of Catalonia, to the Commissar General:
“It can be responsibly stated that our soldiers are not treated adequately…. The soldier is very badly provided for and combat takes place for him on a raw level that is not determined only by the enemy. It is not at all surprising that under these conditions the capacity for self-sacrifice diminishes and the faltering man falters a little more; that is why the need to remedy these problems, whose remedy is within our power, is becoming increasingly more urgent.
“It is very hard to get a man who has not eaten in two days and has no shoes or proper clothing to agree to perform his duty with a meeting or a political speech….”
In a report from the National Subcommittee of the CNT, released in Valencia and dated July 21 of this year [1938], we read the following:
“The Army of Estremadura has been fertile soil for the policy of the communist party, which may be summarized as shameless favoritism in appointments to commanding positions, and proselytism among the troops. Not only were all the higher level commanding positions, from the Army Chief of Staff to the commanders of brigades, domains that were under the control of the communists, but, under pressure from the Party, these same commanders also constantly transferred the personnel under their command in order to satisfy personal ambitions…. Thus, brigades like the 91st had six commanders in six months.
“What has been most detrimental to the morale of the soldiers, however, is the tedium and demoralization imposed by two years in the trenches, and their loss of a sense of comradery with their officers, as a result of their being treated with the old methods of the barracks that quite naturally constituted vulgar insults in light of recent events (as testified to by the events that took place in the 20th and the 109th brigades). And we must also mention, with respect to those who have been persecuted by the Communist Party, horrible cases of extrajudicial executions, consisting of murders under the pretext that the victims were en route to cross over to the fascist zone to join the enemy. Even soldiers in the rearguard areas have been murdered in this way, more than 50 kilometers from the front, on the pretext that they were defecting to the fascists;[42] it reached the point where uncooperative officers (e.g., a captain from the CNT in the 109th, and a lieutenant in the 20th brigade) regularly refused to leave their command posts at night because they felt threatened by assassination and other barbarous attacks.
“Another factor of demoralization has been the private conduct of the high-ranking officers. The commander of the 37th Division in Castuera, lieutenant colonel Cabezudo, for example, was accused of leading a sybaritic and luxurious lifestyle, and that he even received civil authorities with his girlfriend sitting on his knee, an idol of luxury in ankle-length skirts. The girlfriends, the parties, and the squabbles between the Chief of Staff of an army and the commander of a division in the same army, all are part of the same night-watch awaiting the catastrophe.
“Naturally, the whole activity of the high command has been reduced to bureaucratic paper-shuffling….”
How did we react to all of this? By shrugging our shoulders, or with a text whose purpose was to conceal contradictions, without any real decision to impose a limit on this state of affairs, or with silence, with the approval of the Government’s policy, with the silencing of all criticism, with the abdication of all revolutionary identity, ready to say that the persecutors are right to persecute their victims, and that those who are leading us to defeat are right as opposed to those who want to prevent this from happening, that those who are strangling the revolution are on the side of right against those who want to defend it?
We could not put up with this state of affairs for much longer and we appealed to the libertarian rank and file militants to resolve this problem and to show the way forward. The Peninsular Committee of the FAI, beginning in the summer of 1937, sent fraternal notes to the National Committee of the CNT whose purpose was, since we had left the political initiative to the confederal organization, to convince the latter to spearhead a sharp turn in the direction of recovering our identity in order to slow down the dizzying collapse of revolutionary Spain as much as possible. We must say that our efforts in that regard were not crowned with success and our disagreements in our daily discussions concerning our collective conduct became more inflamed, and finally reached the point where it was impossible for us to find any common ground for a joint orientation, a single assessment and a single solution for the diverse problems of the war, the economy, domestic and foreign policy, etc. We sincerely believed that this Plenum would have the virtue of unifying the libertarian movement on the only possible basis, the defense of the movement itself, in order to always have an invincible instrument at the service of the war and of the revolution.[43] Although we were the main protagonists in this war and its first organizers, the militarization of the militias and the creation of the army and the commissariat have deprived us of all effective influence over the course of the conflict. From the time of the Prieto-Negrín government, and then under Negrín alone, our expulsion from the decision making process of the war was almost absolute. Despite the fact that our forces accounted for forty percent of the front line troops, we did not even have five percent of the commanding positions, and the proportion was no different in the Commissariat, not to mention the fact that all military resources are in the hands of people who are more concerned with their own party than with the common cause.
In order to blind us to these facts, however, it is said that we are conquering positions, and that we are better off than before. Besides the error implied by assuming that appointments to a handful of commanding positions, the achievement of a few promotions, or the right to appoint certain commissars, which are utterly incapable of influencing the larger course of events, can be identified with “conquering positions”, it is also false from the numerical point of view, for the indisputable predominance we once exercised in the command over the conduct of the war against fascism has since become a matter of mere cannon fodder. Our share of commanding positions and commissars is derisory compared to our popular support and the number of our comrades fighting at the fronts.
Communist Blackmail
Once Russian aid became an factor of financial speculation, the Communist Party immediately set to work recruiting in the ranks of the army and among the forces of public order, corrupting persons with low moral standards, promising promotions to the hesitant and implementing a program of favoritism for those who joined the Party. This is why the army is still not a real army. It is a soulless mob whose members are kept in some sort of order by means of terroristic methods that are unprecedented in Spain, this very same Spain that had experienced the Inquisition and the most despotic military and civilian dictatorships. Assassinations, imprisonment, being passed over for promotions, penalties that include corporal punishment,[44] persecutions, and all the other methods that have been inflicted on the men of the libertarian movement and other organizations, men abandoned to their fate, without any effective efforts having been made in their defense or in solidarity with the victims.
Russian aid therefore became the main factor of demoralization and defeat, because it was used to destroy the popular roots of our war and to suffocate the revolutionary spirit that inspired it.
The Peninsular Committee of the FAI has repeatedly called attention to the danger posed, to the revolution and to the war effort, by the Communist Party, which is composed for the most part of dubious elements, former members of the Spanish Military Union [Unión Militar Española] and right wing organizations, or even just ordinary profiteers [caballeros de industria], without any revolutionary background at all, who could not care less about the future of Spain. This party is more motley in its composition and more obscure in its origins than any other party in Spain. It does not stand for a doctrine, a guide for action, a direction to take; it stands for the pillage of the public revenue for private ends, and the exploitation of an infamous case of blackmail.
When Aragon was invaded by communist divisions to pave the way for the invasion of that territory and Catalonia by Franco’s divisions, we publicly expressed our protest against Lister’s crimes, depredations and counterrevolutionary actions. We published a report by the Aragon Regional Federation of the CNT that highlighted the economic reconstruction carried out by the peasants, which was brutally and arbitrarily wiped out by the Muscovite invaders.[45]
A policy of favoritism and unmerited promotions destroyed the army of the monarchy. This same policy in the people’s army has up until now prevented this army from being in any condition to victoriously confront the enemy.
The Communist Party gained control over the army and over all the major military-related political and economic institutions of loyalist Spain for the purpose of recruitment, for planning a coup d’état, and for establishing a dictatorship, but it has not been able to build an apparatus that can resist the fascists. The whole mechanism of the Party is oriented towards subduing the home front, and reinforcing its positions against the will of the people themselves, rather than achieving victory over the enemy. And it is doing this with the silent acquiescence of the libertarian movement, which, as I have constantly pointed out, has deviated from its specific function by handing over all of its initiative to its Superior Committees. The promotions granted to communist commanding officers presented a scandalous spectacle. All at once, the 2ndDivision granted unmerited promotions for meritorious conduct to 49 lieutenants, and the 46thand 27thDivisions, and others, did likewise.
In the 27thDivision, over a period of fifteen days (May 1938, D.O.N. No. III, 120, 122), 1,148 promotions were awarded to corporals, sergeants, lieutenants and captains. This is how the commanding officers for the noncommunist divisions were trained.
With such commanders, operating in accordance with the kind of guidelines that have received priority consideration in the conduct of the war, it is not at all surprising that, for example, the 38thMixed Brigade suffered 1,100 casualties recently in an absurd operation, or that the attempts to cross the Segre ended in the destruction of two battalions of the 153rdBrigade, which was originally a libertarian unit, while the commanding officer in that sector, a communist, was not disciplined for the defective planning that preceded these operations. This exemption from punishment, however, is nothing compared to the case of Lieutenant Colonel Gallo, the chief of staff of an army corps, who fled to France, leaving his troops behind, and then returned to Spain to accept an offer of a high level military position.
The following cases are also extremely eloquent testimonies:
General Sarabia, who led the Army of Levante to defeat, instead of being put on trial, was granted the “command” over the Armies of Catalonia.
Colonel Antonio P. Cordón, the current Undersecretary of the Army, a graduate of the Military Academy, demonstrated his lack of ability in the headquarters of the Operations Section of the General Staff and was censured for incompetence, but was subsequently offered the position he now holds.
Colonel Ricardo Burillo, who was appointed Chief of Staff of the Army of Estremadura in November 1937, was incapable of implementing any measures to reorganize his forces, having concerned himself exclusively with furthering the interests of his party. After eight months under his command, the Army of Estremadura was swept away by the enemy offensive in that sector and in a matter of a few days we lost 1,200 square kilometers of territory. Instead of being put on trial as responsible for this disaster or in order to determine the extent to which he may have been responsible, he was transferred to the staff of the Ministry of the Interior.
Lieutenant Colonel Trueba was on the verge of being shot for his role in the operations at the Zuera Nature Preserve, in September 1937, because of his manifest incompetence. He was deprived of command over his unit, but the machinations of his party allowed him to once again occupy positions of command, and he currently commands a unit in the Tenth Army Corps.
Here is the testimony of the Assistant Commissar General of the Army, comrade González Inestal, taken from a report addressed to the confederal organization, dated September 7 of this year [1938]:
“A policy of arbitrary promotions is being implemented. Since the Teruel campaign, communist elements have been promoted along with others who are members of certain cliques. On the other hand, however, elements of proven ability and diligence have been systematically passed over for promotions. Examples: Matilla, Guarner, Casado and many others who are not associated with these cliques. There is the case of a lieutenant from the CNT who serves with the General Staff, who was proposed, along with various other persons, for promotion. All of them got their promotions except him. This comrade, who was furthermore very enthusiastic, diligent and competent, was awarded the medal of duty.”
The same report discusses the “monopoly” of high level commanding positions held by the communists in the armies of the Catalonian zone, and offers as evidence the Armies of the Ebro, under Modesto, the Fifth Army Corps, under Lister, and the Fifteenth under Tagueña, the Twelfth under Etelvino Vega, the Eighteenth under del Barrio, and the Eleventh under Galán.
It may be observed, however, that it did no good for the 26thDivision to have fought most effectively and to have withdrawn in such good order following the final collapse of the Eastern Army Group, nor was Sanz rewarded for having been its commander.
Extrajudicial executions
In all the units of the army, despite the fact, as we have pointed out, that we account for 40 percent of the soldiers, party cells have been operating a network of activities that sow discontent and mistrust among the soldiers and officers. We, who do not support the idea of a party-army, but of a well organized and carefully coordinated instrument for liberating the country, have rejected, and have tried to block the implementation of, the idea of the formation of our own groups within the army to control it and to struggle to counteract all kinds of ulterior maneuvers and extra-legal actions. We are convinced, however, that on this terrain our activity would be unequaled, because we can count on the experience of many years of revolutionary conspiracy and we have the bravest and most self-sacrificing men on our side.
The Commissar appointed to the 43rdDivision, Máximo de Gracia, presented to the Ministry of Defense and to the Commissariat General of the Army a long report, dated June 25, 1938, concerning the activities of the communists in that division when it was in the Pyrenees, attributing the final collapse to their machinations. The report speaks of assassinations, the threat of assassination faced by noncommunist officers and soldiers, the opening of letters, immoral behavior, etc. Nothing has been done to date to determine who is responsible for these activities. The report states, for example:
“In my conclusions, my report reaches its culmination with considerations that are, in my view, the fruits of honest experience. If these activities are not held in check by those who should use their authority to ward off the dangers that threaten us, it will not be long before fate provides us with scenes of violence that could lead to inflamed passions that will be disastrous for the goals of our war…. The events that took place in the 43rd Division are so serious that they should be closely scrutinized by the authorities, with objective impartiality, as the consequences of a political management that with one hand extends its support to the Popular Front, and with the other picks fruit that, because it is not ripe, is leading us to the terrible conclusion of conditions of decomposition that threaten the unity of the army which, to fight the enemy, according to the correct slogan of the Head of State, needs an unbreakable unity and respect for all the ideologies that compose the anti-fascism of the Popular Front.”
We are still waiting for a decision by the Government and for the disciplinary measures that are needed to remedy the evils exposed in the report quoted above. It must be said that numerous groups of comrades from the CNT have also made serious accusations with respect to the 43rdDivision, accusations that corroborate, clarify and amplify the abuses exposed by the socialist, Máximo de Gracia.
From a report signed by a group of officers from the same Division, held in confinement at the Figueras fortress, dated July 13, 1938, we excerpt the following passage:
“For belonging to the CNT, the Second Lieutenant of the Ammunition Section of the 72nd Brigade was shot in the back, and the captain of the same unit, Pedro Ucar, along with others, was constantly persecuted for the same reason. Hatred was unleashed against the elements of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and the CNT. During the period when the 43rd Division was stationed in the Pyrenees, in one incident a lieutenant from the carabineros was shot by the current commander of the 287th Battalion because he did not know the whereabouts of his unit, and on other occasions various individuals from the 21st Brigade were shot without trial or formal proceedings (a grave accusation that can be confirmed by the declarations of soldiers who are currently serving in the brigade), a tactic that would have been employed against the officers from the 102nd Brigade if they had reported as ordered to the Divisional Headquarters.”
It was the Commissar, Máximo de Gracia, who prevented these officers from reporting as ordered to Divisional Headquarters; he had a premonition that made him recommend to these comrades that they should disobey the order in order not to sacrifice themselves in vain.
Our organizations are aware of many such incidents. We expect, however, that they will respond in a worthy manner in defense of the life and the dignity of the soldiers.
Lieutenant José Fortuny, from the 43rdDivision, 72ndBrigade, 286thBattalion, a member of the CNT and the Libertarian Youth, says, in a declaration of which we have obtained a copy:
“After I had spent about a month performing the duties to which I had been assigned, I went with lieutenant A. Gallardo to a meeting with the Commissar, who informed us that we needed, so he said, to join the Communist Party, which we vehemently refused to do, and since then life has become impossible for us in that unit. Once again we were invited to join the Party, and we persisted in our refusal. Then we were promised that if we joined the Party, we would get positions as officers on the General Staff, and we refused….”
In the same declaration, the deprivations and persecutions to which the officers who belong to our organization are subjected for refusing to abandon the CNT and the Libertarian Youth to join the Communist Party are described. The report mentions the names of certain officers who belonged to the ‘Esquerra’ and the republican parties who, with less personal valor than our comrades, had to join the Communist Party in order to avoid being passed over for promotions, harrassed and persecuted.
The following passage is taken from the report submitted by Captain Pedro Ucar, of the 72ndBrigade:
“Finally, they organized a small Cheka. The leader of this party of assassins is lieutenant Moisés García. This person has no authority whatsoever and he was the one who assassinated comrade Puertas, a second lieutenant who belonged to our organization. He was a good comrade, from Campo (Huesca), whose only crime was to have been a consummate anarchist. Upon having been informed of what took place I sought an explanation from the Commissar of the Brigade, who told me that he was sure that he had been shot for attempting to desert to the enemy. I was not satisfied by this explanation, however, so I undertook my own investigation and I discovered that his execution had taken place in an automobile.
“This Moisés García, boss of the Cheka, shot him twice in the temple while saying to him: ‘Take this, asshole, so you won’t make any more trouble.’ This took place on the highway from Ainsa to Bielsa, on April 6 or 7. His body was buried in La Fortunada, a small village in the Valley of Bielsa. A good witness with respect to this crime is the Company Commissar, Augusto Sánchez, since the killer himself told him all about it….”
Comrade Pedro Ucar’s account is just one of many such cases. This procedure is all too common for it to go unpunished, and for us, those of us who are not at the front, but who nonetheless have a mission to perform, it is unthinkable that we should just put our hands in our pockets and cooperate with the murderers of our comrades and abandon those who are the authentic base of our movement to their fates.
The sinister achievements of communist policy in the 43rdDivision are confirmed by the captains of the 102ndBrigade, Francisco Santos Molina, Francisco Gálvez Medina, Eusebio Llorente Sala, and Agústin Gómez Núñez, all of whom are members of the CNT.
Comrade Carrillo, in a report to the Defense Section of the Regional Committee of the CNT of Catalonia, states as follows:
“I will tell you about the events that took place on the Aragon Front on April 13, at 7:00 p.m. (1938). A company from the 26th Division, some 80 men serving under four officers, while proceeding down the highway at Doncella, when it was passing by the base of the Disciplinary Battalion of the Eleventh Army Corps was invited by some persons under the order of the commander of the base, Palacios, the commander of the Disciplinary Battalion, to stop at the base so that the commander could have a few words with company’s officers.
“Upon arriving at the base, the officers were invited to the office of the commander, and upon entering his office they were disarmed, so that the commander could assemble the soldiers of their company and make them listen to a crude and vulgar speech. Then the company was ordered to come forward five at a time and surrender their weapons. Then he told the soldiers that they could continue on their way to their base. A sergeant of the company, seeing that the officers of the company were not leaving with them, asked the commander of the Disciplinary Battalion if they were being held at his orders and the commander told him that he should take command of the company until it returned to its base. On April 14, 1938, at four or five in the morning, the officers, three lieutenants and a Commissar, were stood up in front of a firing squad without any judicial proceedings under military law, and it is assumed that their only crime was to belong to the 26th Division. On the next day the Commissar of the 26th Division contacted the Disciplinary Battalion by telephone to inquire about the status of the detainees, and the commander told him that they had been found guilty by a summary council of war and that Galán acted as counsel for the defense.
This comrade says that there was no such council of war, and that the officers were shot for belonging to the 26thDivision.
Comrade Baztán, a militant from the Center Region, has written a report on the operations carried out in the Montes Universales, in which the 70thMixed Brigade and other forces participated. These units were under heavy pressure and a company was sent to reinforce one of their positions, under the command of captain Francisco Montes Manchón, a communist, who was ordered to discreetly insinuate his men into the position on the front line so that they would not be observed by the enemy. This captain led his men in single file, igoring his orders. When this company of reinforcements arrived at its destination, the Commissar of the battalion of the 70thBrigade, comrade José Gómez Álvarez, was making a speech to the soldiers to encourage them to fight heroically. Captain Francisco Montes shot him in the back, killing him and a soldier, and wounding a corporal from the same Brigade, and then loudly berated the officers for being members of the CNT [confederales] (testimony endorsed by the senior officer of the battalion, Ramón Poveda). This report, which contains many other interesting facts, bears the date of August 18 [1938].
We could easily mention and provide documentation for a thousand cases like the ones that we have related here and whose victims have preferentially been comrades from the CNT, the FAI and the Libertarian Youth.
These facts are not unknown to either the National Committee of the CNT or the Peninsular Committee of the Libertarian Youth. The current Minister of Public Instruction, comrade Segundo Blanco, submitted a report on March 25, 1938 to the Minister of Defense in the name of the Defense Section of the National Committee of the CNT, in which he exposes a number of scandalous incidents and is obviously referring to Dr. Negrín when he says, “Our warning is serious and our readiness to see to it that justice is done is firmly categorical….” We do not know just how serious and categorical this position on the crimes committed with impunity at the front really was. We do know, however, that acts of the same kind are still being committed and that up until now no one has been punished for committing them. And the signatory of this report exposing communist criminality is himself a member of the Government that has tolerated and continues to tolerate this criminality, when it has not fostered it by way of its Ministries, its Russian Advisers and its fanatical commanders.
The report we just mentioned also describes a meeting of communist cells held in Torralba de Aragon, on March 16, 1938, with the names of the attendees and a summary of their directives to violently eliminate all who oppose the implementation of the Party’s plans. The commander of the 142ndBrigade, A. Merino, summarizes the views of those who attended this meeting with the following words: “Whoever gets in the way, in a visit to the trenches or to the workplace, is looking for a bullet and he will find it. Or, you put him behind barbed wire, and then four bullets for desertion and we achieve the same result or even better”.
Those responsible for the assassination of the political delegate of the radio company of the 141stMixed Brigade, José Meca Cazorla, and of another soldier from the same unit, José Hervás Soler, have yet to be brought to justice. Nor have the murderers of the soldier Jaime Trepat, from the same unit, even though the investigation conducted at the initiative of comrade Molina, the Commissar of the Army Corps, provided enough solid clues to expect that the perpetrators of these crimes would be rapidly brought to justice and punished. Proof of the seriousness and soundness of this investigation is the fact that its results were submitted by the Defense Section of the National Committee of the CNT to the Minister of National Defense by the current Minister of Education, Segundo Blanco.
There is nothing to be gained by extending this macabre account. We may conclude by saying that many active-duty comrades serving at the front are more afraid of being assassinated by their communist allies than they are of dying in battle with the enemy from the other side of the trenches.
This state of affairs is not just sporadic, but endemic, ever since the agents of Moscow infiltrated the ranks of the army. Collaborating with them, on the pretext that the war renders it necessary, is more than just a mistake, it is madness.[46]
Proselytism and corruption in the army
You do not have to take our word for it when we talk about the proselytism and the corruption in the army due to the work of the Communist Party, which parades its lack of scruples on every terrain. This is what the unrefuted reports in the hands of our Superior Committees say.
For example, the Health and Hygiene Trade Union of Barcelona tells us in a report dated June 18, 1938, among other serious matters, the following:
“There is a growing problem in the military hospitals. It is this: the most despicable and vile politics is being practiced; and the patients, our wounded brothers, are its targets. It traffics in their pain and their wounds, and makes their welfare contingent on their political affiliation.”
The same Trade Union reveals how communists are being evacuated from the front for alleged illnesses, and provides evidence that cannot be ignored without harm to the very same confederal organization that tolerates all of this from outside of and within the Government in which it participates.
Member Number 13653 of the Madrid Socialist Organization says, in a long report on party activities in the army and the decomposition of the army due to the prevailing climate of immorality and terror:
“In the Headquarters (of the 33rd Mixed Brigade, February 1937), a cell was formed that determined the ways and means to place members of the Communist Party in all the decisive positions involving command or planning.
“We clearly recall that shortly after the operations at Brunete, these elements attended a meeting in order to inflict severe punishment—so they said—on several of their own group for the crime of having obtained safe-conduct passes and the means of escape for the Marquis of Fontalba who was being held in the Escorial, but at the meeting everything remained mysteriously concealed, since it could be ascertained, and the meeting proved it, that all of them were implicated in these crimes and this opportune silence was maintained by way of a sharing out of the loot that was paid as ransom….”
In the same report we see how an officer, the commander of a Brigade, the 33rd, was relieved of his command because he did not want to join the Communist Party, and how the Party replaced him with a semi-fascist, Cabezos, a man who was exposed as such and as a personal friend of Queipo del Llano and of Doval by the soldiers themselves, without any measures being taken to prevent the fate of thousands of men from being placed in such dubious hands….
The Regional Committees of the CNT and of the FAI of Catalonia (Defense Section) sent a well-documented report on party activities in army camps and bases to the Minister of National Defense, dated October 2, 1937, without getting any response.
This report exposes instances of proselytism and the machinations of the Communist Party that can lead to no other result than the demoralization and decomposition of the ranks….
Of the 19 transport battalions that currently exist, ten or twelve are in the hands of communist commanders, and only one or two are under the command of our comrades, despite the fact that 70% or 80% of the personnel of these battalions is composed of members of the CNT and the FAI. And we took advantage of the occasion to mention the following inexplicable wage scales: in the army they pay 15 pesetas, in the air force 12, in the carabineros 25 and in the Undersecretariat of Munitions 30, for the same work.
Our organizations also possess the reports of comrade Baztán submitted a few months ago [summer 1938], based on his tours of the fronts in Levante and the Center. In them you will also find abundant evidence to support our allegations.
Party criminality is not just restricted to the lower-level officers, it is also manifested higher up, in the superior commands.
We read in a report from the Secretary of the Defense Section of the Regional Committee of Catalonia, dated June 11, 1938, that the comrades
“… are becoming disillusioned with our organization, because it leaves them defenseless and at the mercy of the Communist Party and because they do not see us doing anything effective to help them; the demoralization of the soldiers, constantly subjected to pressure to join the Communist Party, to contribute to Red Aid, and so on…. Internal operations in the army must be fundamentally overhauled. There must be a sweeping purge of all commanding positions, the SIM must be purged, the tribunals, the medical sections, the radio sections, the transport sections, the engineers, the general staffs of the Army Corps and of several divisions, all must be purged; the problem of the Commissariat must be resolved, etc. And above all we must prevent our comrades from being persecuted, and turned into grist for the mills of political maneuvers and constantly victimized by every kind of outrage….”
It is not a lack of specific revelations, it is not unawareness of the truth on the part of the Superior Committees of our organizations that explains why nothing has been done to rectify the current state of affairs. The Committees of our organizations know what is going on. Their unanimity of opinion therefore seems natural and their response, the only possible one. We have not, however, even been able to agree with respect to the urgent need for defending the lives of our militants at the front and behind the lines.
In a well written and thoroughly documented report on the situation of the Army of the East, submitted by an officer serving with the 26thDivision, after an abundance of details concerning the military situation and the condition of the soldiers’ morale, and after explaining the reason for so many military defeats and disasters, we are warned in the following terms:
“We think that one can, and one must, demand respect and recognition of the value that each person represents, and our movement, both with regard to its individual members as well as its organization, must demand and impose this respect if we are to prevent its men from becoming dispirited and discouraged because they are not supported by the libertarian movement, support to which they are entitled and which must not be renounced, regardless of the excuse, no matter how critical the situation may be and however many obstacles stand in the way of the accomplishment of their tasks as men of responsibility….”
At this time we have already observed certain cases of our comrades who, without any attempt on the part of the organization to defend them, cornered in their positions at the front line, have chosen to accept the membership card of the Communist Party. This seems to us to be a very serious symptom.
Our comrades have the impression that no one cares about them, that the sinister policies of the Communist Party have been given free rein. And we are not talking about just a few cases, but of thousands and thousands of comrades who confess that they are more afraid of being assassinated by the enemies on their side of the trenches than of being killed in battle with the enemies from the other side.
The Peninsular Committee of the FAI has attempted to provide an active and energetic defense of our comrades, and has exposed specific cases but has not succeeded in obtaining the necessary support and interest from the other Superior Committees for engaging in decisive joint action. The time came, however, when toleration could no longer be anything but complicity and the Peninsular Committee resolved to work on its own account, exposing the real situation of the militants and calling upon them to defend themselves. This was the purpose of several pamphlets we distributed to the anarchist militants. And it is our aim to appeal to them to prevent them from being blinded to what is really happening.
We also sent a documented report, dated August 20, 1938, to the Head of State in which we emphasized the disastrous results of the military policy that is currently being implemented, and in which we also pointed to the remedies for rectifying the situation, calling for a fundamental change in all the arbitrary and criminal procedures that are currently being practiced.
Furthermore, the National Committee of the CNT itself said, in a letter to Dr. Negrín dated May 14, 1938, that
“… it will eventually become impossible to preserve the collaboration of all anti-fascists unless the constantly growing power of one faction over the others is curtailed, since this power causes that faction to lose its head, and to believe that it can single-handedly control the situation, and this will unleash the violent clash that will shatter anti-fascist unity”.
The National Committee therefore recognizes the gravity of the situation, and has expressed its alarm to the Head of State. So this is not an isolated opinion of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI. It is just that we, as in the past, believe that the truth known by the National Committee of the CNT, which leads the latter to work in a particular manner, must also be known by the rank and file militants, so that they will be the determining factor in resolving affairs of such great importance.
We have often heard comrades attribute a special gift to responsibility: ‘If the comrades knew the truth about what is going on, the continuation of the war would be impossible.’ Frederick the Great of Prussia was of the same opinion: ‘If my soldiers were to learn how to read, no one would be left in the ranks.’ No, we are aware of the situation and we do not turn our backs on the conflict. And we are not made up of different stuff than the comrades who are fighting at the front or working behind the lines. We have the common denominator of human nature. If the National Committee of the CNT knows the real situation and does not abandon its post, there is no reason to think that the rank and file militants would do anything different. However, we have the advantage of possible joint action to remedy the disasters caused by the terrible leadership of the war, which would allow us to carry on with the conflict, not as we have until now, without any direction, but with guarantees of efficacy and victory.
The Secretary of the Defense Section of the National Committee of the CNT submitted a report to the National Committee, dated July 29 [1938], concerning political propaganda in the army. We agree with its contents and we wish to point out that we are not the only people who have turned the weapons of criticism on the current leadership of the war. A comrade as competent as Miguel Yoldi writes:
“It is depressing to note the scorn with which the officers are treated who, although not lacking the indispensable professional qualities and moral stature needed for successful operations, are not counted among those who, due to a lack of intelligence and personal valor, find in the deceitfulness and conformism inherent to the opportunism of politics, sinecures, distinction and respect…. We could compile a whole book listing the names of intelligent men who have desk jobs or honorary positions who are refractory to party slogans.”
This report then describes the disastrous campaign at Brunete as “an eminently political operation, not a military one”. We suffered 25,000 casualties in that campaign without attaining a single strategic objective, all for the purpose of saving the Government which had just expelled the trade unions from the cabinet. It was clear from the very beginning that the problematic Brunete campaign was the responsibility of a certain political fraction, the savior of Spain. The same party-based criteria prevailed over the operations on the Aragon Front in mid-1937, and a new mayor of Zaragoza was appointed before that offensive even began.
“It would be idle to enumerate more instances” [the report continues], “to show that the army has been used on occasion as a political weapon in the service of politics to the detriment of the war itself…. The army is more suffused with party politics than ever before, and our soldiers and officers will never display the bravery that we can expect from them and of which we know they are capable as long as the use of their qualities is subject to a certain political leadership that persists, from the directive institutions of the war, in fostering influence-peddling and viewing the problems of the war from its own political perspective.
“And to top it all off, there is the case of the Army of Estremadura, whose commander in chief was exclusively devoted to recruiting party members and allocating commanding positions without any consideration of the qualities of the men involved, relegating training, defensive preparations and the competence of the officers to a secondary level…. Capricious removal of officers, abuses and the subjection of military units to party interests were the standard conduct of this commander, which led to the decomposition of the army….”
We also agree with this final assessment:
“These things are so common, and so serious, due to the consequences that they entail, that for us to remain silent about them and even for the Government to ignore them, is criminal….”
The slogan of resistance.
We shall now speak a little about this resistance, of the slogan of perpetual resistance.
It is not we, the anarchists, who will have to provide an accounting, not even when the war is over, for our actions. But we do not want to be guilty of approving a slogan that says nothing or that is not practiced by those who preach it, either.
We do not want to go into details about whether those who talk about resisting the enemy will effectively resist to the end, or whether they only say this as long as they have an airplane at their disposal, nor do we want to explain our legitimate doubts concerning the sincerity of certain sectors when they preach resistance ‘a outrance’, while they set aside hundreds of millions of pesetas for settling exiles in America. We do not want to ascertain whether those who are most lavish in their praise for resistance already have their families and their liquid assets in foreign countries, nor do we even want to know if the authors of this hoax have succeeded in making certain arrangements in the suites of European embassies that are inconsistent with this famous resistance to the end. But the policy of resistance imposes some preconditions that we cannot remain silent about and concerning which the view of our militants who are fighting and dying must not be obscured with rhetorical hot air.
To resist the Italo-German powers that are providing weapons, technicians, raw materials and men to the enemy, we need a possibility for economic support. However, the two long years that we have fought this war, and the concentration of the anti-fascist population in the loyalist zones, have absolutely exhausted all the resources of our country. We therefore do not possess what is necessary to subsist economically and to feed, with every imaginable restriction, the population of our territory. Hunger is beginning to make itself felt in a most disturbing manner and everything points to the fact that our difficulties will reach such a pitch this winter that it will be very hard to even continue the war. Foreign aid, after our own financial reserves have been depleted, is only a hypothesis, and with a hypothesis we cannot build the framework of a resistance that must also be a physical resistance, the resistance of the population that is called upon to make sacrifices.
To resist we also need weapons, or the means and the raw materials that are indispensable for their manufacture. We do not have the weapons or the ammunition for a long campaign nor do we have factories or raw materials to supply our needs in this respect. The interruption of the more or less clandestine trafficking in arms and ammunition destined for loyalist Spain, with respect to this minimum amount that arrives in our hands, may take on the contours of an irreparable and immediate catastrophe. There is no guarantee at all that we could lay the foundations for this resistance that is so fervently praised, that we could consolidate this resistance in a state of affairs that would offer us secure perspectives.
Nothing is known about whether or not there is any gold left in the reserves of the Bank of Spain. But we will point out one fact that speaks quite eloquently: Russia has acquired the textiles and other products stockpiled in Catalonia, products worth hundreds of millions of pesetas, and there is a well-founded suspicion that these acquisitions serve the purpose of guarantees of payment. The financial policy of the Government of the Republic has been implemented, ever since the outbreak of the war, in an atmosphere of secrecy that is historically unprecedented, even in the regimes of imperialist despotism. We know absolutely nothing—and we assume that this is also the case for all the political parties that participate in public affairs—about what is going on with our finances, or even their approximate status. And in order to commit ourselves without any objections to a slogan of absolute resistance, the first thing that we would have to know and examine is our own financial situation. With our finances in a state of bankruptcy, without gold, our commercial credit, already weakened by the hostility of the fascist-sympathizing countries of the world, has come to an end, and with it so have our possibilities of obtaining products from foreign countries.[47]
The communist policy of seeking predominance, focused more on domestic rule than on the achievement of effective victories against the enemy, has brought us to this situation in which we cannot count on an organized army, and in which we do not have military commanders capable of performing the great mission that is incumbent upon them in this tragic hour. Having sown demoralization and disorientation in the ranks of the combatants by means of continuous injustices and by abuses and outrages that have become the rule, to the detriment of those who do not have the membership card of the Russian agents, at this juncture the only organized army we possess is in the pages of the “Gaceta”. We shall merely point out one fact: while extraordinary contingents have been organized and equipped with the most modern arms for the services of public order—carabineros, security corps—the Catalonian zone does not have any reserve forces for its army, which leads us to fear that a new enemy breakthrough at the front, without any reinforcements to contain it, could very well mean the end of the war.[48]
The Commissar of the Army Corps of the Catalonian zone submitted a long report, dated August 25 [1938], to the Commissar General of the Army, from which we shall extract the following opinion and this exhortation suffused with human feeling and realism:
“The parties and organizations should basically concern themselves with solving the problems of supplying food and other necessities to the civilian population. The present lamentable state of organization has deep repercussions on the front. The soldiers think that their loved ones at home are hungry and this undermines their morale….”
Unless this problem is solved, one cannot, and one must not, blindly lead this great people to this so-called policy of resistance, whose weakness we have indicated. Real supporters of the idea that the struggle must continue until victory, we emphasize the previous points to indicate that it is precisely those who are calling for resistance ‘a outrance’ who are not creating the necessary conditions for this resistance to be possible.
It is our desire that, at least among our militants, cured of their terror by the crucible of the struggle, a defeatist slogan like “resistance” plain and simple should not attain the category of myth, and, were they to confer too much credit to those who espouse it, they would therefore fail to take advantage of the opportunity to impose those absolutely necessary changes that our cause demands so that the war will end in a satisfactory way.
Our situation must improve and will improve, but only on the condition that we do not deliver ourselves, blindfolded, into the hands of those who, due to a lack of ability and efficient managerial skills, are seeking to deceive us with fairy tales.
The Russian advisers
One of the most serious misfortunes that have undermined the effective leadership of our war effort was the invasion of the so-called military technicians or advisers from Russia. They are utterly unfamiliar with the terrain, their level of military knowledge is no greater than that of a French or German lieutenant, and their ideas are more political than technical. They are far from being superior to our average career military officers, and none of these advisers can compare with our more advanced officers.
Among the reports of our Investigation Sections [Secciones de información], we may read the following:
“An air force officer [name omitted to protect his identity], as a result of the conduct of the operations that led to the loss of Teruel, submitted an exposé in which he proved that the deliberate failure to use our air force during those operations could be qualified as treason. This exposé was received by Prieto, who then sent it to a military commission which, before making any attempt to obtain extensive information about the air force commanders, ruled that the failure to use our air force in those operations was due to orders sent by the Russian advisers embedded in the air force high command. Our informant, in view of the fact that there were enough operational planes for engaging in the operations at Teruel, believes that the communists, using the war for their own political ends, were trying to bring about the military disaster that would discredit the Minister of War and would lead to the precipitous fall of Prieto.”[49]
With respect to the air force command structure and how it became subservient to a policy that had nothing to do with the war, we shall cite one of the cases with which we were personally acquainted. Forces from the Carlos Marx Division successfully overran and seized the Church of Santa Quiteria, a strategic position from which Almudevar could be dominated, and whose possession made possible an immediate extension of the Aragon Front. The success of the initial operation promised to be merely the prelude to subsequent brilliant military victories.
The enemy was entirely aware of the importance of the loss, and made preparations to retake the church regardless of the cost, with the help of its air force, artillery and shock troops. An appeal was made to our air force to come to the support of the troops who had occupied the church. Because this matter involved a victory won by a communist-oriented military unit, this support was taken for granted. However, the air force planes that departed from Sariñena were diverted to Valencia, in accordance with the orders they received en route. The Church of Santa Quiteria had to be evacuated. We recall the indignation of the communist soldiers in the Carlos Marx column. In response to our complaints, the Russian Consul Antonov Ovseyenko declared to us that the Russian commander of the planes who had refused to allow them to be sent to the aid of the defenders of the church had been shot; but this was not true.
The truth is that the significance of the storming of Santa Quiteria and the operations that it immediately made possible would have constituted a resounding victory for the combatants on the Aragon Front, because then they would have been able to reinforce certain political positions that were the targets of an attack that was even then being planned.
The conduct of the war has been put into the hands of these Russian emissaries. Our High Commands and General Staffs have almost been reduced to just following their orders. And the succession of defeats, and the pointless waste of human lives, have not yet put an end to this foreign intervention in our war. How long do we have to wait before this element of corrosion and defeat is stopped?
The Party interests that were created and continue to develop on the basis of the blackmail of Russian aid are so vast and so decisive that any change in the conduct of the war instantaneously also presupposes the precipitous and definitive fall of a whole political framework whose totalitarian tendency is repugnant to the people of Spain.
No one is more grateful than us for, and no one is more unsparing their recognition of, the help that has been offered to us by non-Spaniards. But the case of Russian aid is not help in that sense, it is a business deal from the point of view of arms sales, and it is an intolerable mortgage on the future finances of Spain from a political point of view. We can abide by the business deals, in which Russia has as much interest as loyalist Spain, but the mortgage on Spain’s future cannot continue, because Russia has taken payment in gold for everything that it has sent us, without any need for haggling or negotiations about price. We have paid everything that has been demanded from us. Maybe we paid a hundred pesetas for something that was only worth ten. But that is another question.
The Russian advisers do not have the technical qualities required to conduct our war, since we have loyal Spanish officers who could give good lessons in tactics and strategy to the generals, colonels, majors, and all the rest of them sent by Stalin to teach us how to win battles, like the battles of Brunete and Teruel, or the routs of the Armies of the East, Levante and Estremadura.
The conduct of the war
We recommend the report written by the leader of the Investigation Section [Sección de información] of the 26thDivision, R. Busquets, dated April 20, 1938, on the operations of the enemy offensive on the Eastern fronts and on the subsequent situation. From the first to the last lines of the report, he draws one terrible lesson:
“Our units, our military organization, and their leaders, do not have the necessary mental or material flexibility…. The solution lies in the immediate supply of our army with the elements, the means, the command structure and the leadership, at least equal in quality to regular soldiers….”
The National Committee of the CNT itself, in a document sent to the Government at our initiative, dated March 15, 1938, highlights this defect and stresses how little has been done to remedy it.
We have a mass of soldiers who are superior to their commanders, and if this situation is not resolved, the war cannot end with our victory.
During the days of the rebel offensive towards Sagunto and Valencia, the National Subcommittee of the CNT drafted several military reports that display knowledge and understanding and are very well informed. In one of them, we read the following:
“What chances does our army have to stop the enemy’s offensive and neutralize its military action by turning it towards the terrain upon which we have an interest in waging the struggle? With respect to men and materiel, we have never been as well prepared as we are now, but we have never witnessed such a disastrous use of all of these men and all that materiel as we have seen during the last two months. Whole units, such as relatively well armed divisions and brigades, are employed, when the enemy attacks, in a direct frontal confrontation with the enemy and often these units are deployed on terrain that is not suitable for defense. These units employed in this way are totally worn out after three or four days of headlong attacks on the enemy’s vanguard. Not once have reserve divisions or brigades been used in counterattacks on the enemy’s flanks. Every one of the enemy’s offensives have offered excellent targets for counterattacks from one or another side to cut off the constant advance of the main spearhead of the enemy’s forces.”
The report does not refer to these errors as being responsible for the loss of the war, “but we do think”, it says, “that the high level decision makers of this army are incompetent….”
This same opinion is expressed in thousands of reports submitted by military commanders, staff officers and commissars who are members of our organizations. The Russian advisers, the only people in Spain who have the power to make decisions that affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of Spanish soldiers, are just a facade. When an operation does not work the way they planned it, they are plunged into confusion, they renounce all initiative, and it is only measures improvised at the front itself that can occasionally rectify the situation.
For our units, it is the doctrines, the methods and the orders of the Russian advisers that have given us General Rojo, the Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Republic. General Rojo does not have what it takes to perform his task or to bear his responsibilities. And the right time to fire him was after the disasters that took place after he was appointed to his current position as Chief of Staff, but his responsibilities were not limited in any way.
That is enough for now, however. We have only touched upon a minuscule part of what needs to be said about the war, about its leadership and about the preconditions that must unavoidably be created in order to win it. But the facts we have related above, which were not our personal views, but excerpts from unrefuted documents that are filed in the archives of our organizations, is enough to make a decision. And if the arguments were not eloquent enough, one need only glance at a map of the Peninsula and one will see the thousands of square kilometers that were lost under the leadership of those who are currently responsible for the conduct of the war, and the enormous number of cities that have been taken by the enemy, including some very important ones: Bilbao, Santander, Gijón, Lérida, Castellón, Teruel, Caspe, Alcañiz, Morella, Vinaroz, Balaguer, Tremp, Castuera….”
We then proposed to the combined Plenum the creation of a Commission for Military Planning and Operations, to be composed of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI, the National Committee of the CNT, and the Regional Defense Sections.
In our view, this Commission would have directed its efforts towards the following goals:
To bring about a complete overhaul of the highest levels of military decision decision making and the removal of those responsible for the military disasters of the Prieto-Negrín, and then the Negrín, Governments.
To take measures to bring about the immediate withdrawal of the Russian advisers and their subordination to Spanish commanders.
To work for the selection of military commanders from among the commissars and the restriction of the commissariat, which will have to be given more specific responsibilities.
The radical reform of the SIM [Military Investigation Service], without prejudice to the demand to bring to justice those who committed or instigated the horrendous crimes that have taken place beyond the borders of Spain and which are being discussed in the European chancelleries. The SIM will preferentially be employed in the rebel zone and in Morocco.
All promotions awarded and punishments inflicted in the military since May, 1937 will be subject to review.
To immediately impose the criterion that military commands will be conferred based on ability rather than the candidate’s membership in any particular party.
All the military commanders and commissars who have joined the various parties and organizations since July 19, 1936, will be compelled to choose between being dismissed from their positions or renouncing their party membership.
The carabineros, the security police, the SIM agents on the homefront, the shirkers who have been protected by their political parties, etc., who belong to the categories being called up to serve as military replacements, will be placed at the disposal of the Ministry of National Defense.
Reserve units will be formed from the over-staffed institutions of the homefront, rearguard battalions, labor divisions, police forces, etc.
Foreigners will be removed from positions of responsibility in the army and in the forces of public order and information services.
To carry out an immediate purge of the commands of every unit in the army and the forces of public order.
To organize a campaign of irregular warfare as a complement to the war of regular armies.
Severe punishment will be demanded for those who have perpetrated or ordered the assassinations committed at the front and behind the lines for reasons of party affiliation.
An intensive project to reinforce all fortifications, using, if necessary, contingents of workers belonging to the civilian population.
To see to it that arms and auxiliary services in the army are equitably distributed to all units.
To coordinate the high command centers of the army, the air force and the navy, and the armored units.
On these foundations and with this orientation, a Joint Commission could assure the unity of action and interpretation of our movement and give a minimum of satisfaction to those comrades who are fighting and dying for the anti-fascist cause.
Viewed in retrospect, now that the war is over, it seems impossible that the vast number of serious accusations that we summarized in that report did not merit radical resolutions, a change in the line of conduct, a refusal to support in any way the government that inspired or consented to this state of affairs in the army. So many lies had been told, so much dissimulation deployed—a political weapon—that when the leaders of the parties and organizations were presented with the naked truth, they deliberately shut their eyes so that they did not have to see it. A policy fit for ostriches. Our own friends were afraid of the truth and preferred to allow themselves to be bewitched by the songs of the siren of negrinismo. We carried on alone, a restricted minority even in the Peninsular Committee of the FAI, supported only by our conviction that the great masses of the combatants were on our side, and that the people in the rearguard also shared our views. But at the heights we occupied we lacked the power necessary to translate our opinions into deeds; every vehicle of access to the masses had been closed to us by the war policy, and as for the outside world, for those who were completely unaware of our efforts, seeing our organizations even participating in Negrín’s cabinet, the impression of unity, of harmonious accord and solidarity of all the political and social tendencies, seemed to leave no room for doubt.
With the publication of these documents we want to reestablish the truth. We did not overthrow the Negrín Government because we did not have the power to do so, because our movement had been weakened by confusion and had broken apart and dispersed, and because those men from other parties who agreed with us concerning the urgent need for a change of the helmsmen of the government and of the war, were in the same position as we were, isolated, under constant surveillance like prisoners, removed from all contact with the people and even with their own party or trade union institutions. For all of them, the Spanish tragedy has been an awful disaster, but it was even worse for us, who have never lived with our eyes closed and who had been screaming at the top of our lungs, calling attention to the reef towards which we were being led, full steam ahead, cheerfully, in the name of the policy of resistance and in the name of imminent final victory.
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