The Second Republic and the Civil War(from Grolier’s online) The
history of the Second Republic falls into four distinct phases: (1)
the
Provisional Government, which lasted until the religious issue forced
its resignation in October 1931, (2)
the
governments of the Left Republicans and Socialists, which ruled from
October 1931 and were defeated in the elections of November 1933,
(3)
the
conservative government of the Radical Republicans and the Roman
Catholic right from November 1933 to February 1936, which was punctuated
by the revolution of October 1934 and ended with the electoral victory
of the Popular Front in February 1936 (4)
the
government of the Popular Front and "the descent into
violence" that culminated in the military rising of July 1936. The
Provisional Government was a coalition government, presided over by Niceto Alcalá Zamora, a
former monarchist converted to republicanism, whose Catholicism
reassured moderate opinion. The coalition included all the groups
represented at San Sebastián: Lerroux's Radicals, the Catalan left, the
Socialists, and the Left Republicans dominated by Manuel Azaña y Diaz. The
elections to the Constituent Cortes strengthened the Socialists and Left
Republicans and thus upset the parliamentary balance between moderate
Catholic Republicans and the left. It was the left that imprinted its
views on the constitution, especially its religious clauses. The
historically conditioned anti-clericalism had already led the government
to tolerate an outburst of church burning (May 1931). The Socialists and
Left Republicans inserted in the constitution an attack on religious
education and the regular orders, which forced the resignation of Alcalá
Zamora and Miguel Maura, his minister of the interior. This
direct and, it would seem, ill-advised clash with Catholic sentiment was
to provide a base for the construction of a party of the right devoted
to the reversal of the church settlement. This party, the creation of
the Catholic politician José María Gil Robles, became Acción Popular;
it was to become the main component of the right-wing electoral
grouping, the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights (Confederación
Española de Derechas Autónomas; CEDA). To the left its "accidentalism"
(the doctrine that forms of government were irrelevant provided the
church could fulfill its mission) was suspect. (See Gil Robles y Quinoñes,
José María.) From
October 1931 the government, with Azaña as premier, was in the hands of
Left Republicans and Socialists, with the Catholic right, the
Basque Catholics, the Navarrese Carlists, and Lerroux's Radicals in
opposition. Azaña aimed to create a modern democracy; labour
legislation would be the work of the Socialists, with the UGT (socialist
labor union) leader, Francisco Largo Caballero, as minister of labour. In April 1931 there was a danger that Catalonia
might declare its independence within a federal state. Azaña's greatest
achievement was the settlement of the Catalan question. He overcame
conservative Republican opposition to limited home rule under the
Generalitat, which was controlled by the Catalan left (Esquerra) under
Lluis Companys. Largo Caballero's legislation provided labour with a
strong negotiating position but could not, in itself, mitigate the
mounting unemployment, which was particularly serious in the latifundios
of the southwest. Since new machinery for the settlement of labour
disputes was dominated by the UGT (socialist labor union), it was
opposed by the CNT (anarchist labor union), now influenced by the
extreme revolutionary apoliticism of an anarchist group, the Iberian
Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Ibérica; FAI). Violent
strikes were frequent. Sedition
from the right came to a head in General José Sanjurjo's
pronunciamiento in Seville (Aug. 10, 1932). Politically more dangerous
than Sanjurjo's abortive coup, however, were the steady growth of Gil
Robles' Acción Popular and the Socialists' desertion of the Azaña
coalition, as Largo Caballero wearied of cooperation with
"bourgeois" parties. In the elections of November 1933,
therefore, the left was divided and the right relatively united in the
electoral union of the CEDA. Given an electoral law that favoured
electoral coalitions, the CEDA and Lerroux's Radicals, now a respectable
middle-class party, triumphed. The newly elected Cortes was dominated
by Lerroux's Radicals and the CEDA. Lerroux could not govern
without the support of Gil Robles. With power within sight, Gil
Robles accentuated his legalism, to the distaste of the militant
monarchists among his supporters. Nevertheless, his party was regarded
by the Left Republicans and Socialists as a Catholic brand of the
fascist trends now winning out in western Europe. When
CEDA entered Lerroux's government, the Socialists staged a revolution.
Revolutionary councils were set up in the mining districts of Asturias,
where there was considerable destruction of property. In Barcelona the
revolution was the work of Catalan nationalists, who believed autonomy
was imperiled by the actions of the Madrid government in overruling an
agrarian law passed by the Generalitat. Unsupported by the CNT, the
revolution was quickly suppressed. The
October Revolution of 1934 was the dividing point in the Second Republic. The Socialists, fearing
the fate of their Austrian and German brothers, had revolted against a
legal government and thereby established in the minds of the right the
fear of "Red" rebellion. In the subsequent repression by the
army lay the emotional origins of the Popular Front against
"fascism"--a re-creation of the Azaña coalition of Left
Republicans and Socialists in order to fight the elections of February
1936. The Popular Front won the election of February 1936 by a narrow
majority. Spain had become polarized, and the division was to intensify.
The Popular Front government was exclusively Republican. Under Largo
Caballero (UGT), the left Socialists put increasing pressure on the
government, using revolutionary language if not intending revolution.
Largo Caballero's revolutionary rhetoric concealed his hope that the
orthodox Republicans could be eased from power, leaving the field open
to a pure Socialist government, which his followers chose to call, in Just
as the fears of the "fascism" of the right justified the
defensive reaction of the Socialists, so the right argued that the
Republican government was a prisoner of the revolutionary left (they
could point to a rapid growth of communist influence). The Falange,
founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the son of the dictator, was a
nationalist anti-Marxist grouping appealing to youth ready to engage in
street affrays with the Socialist Youth. Conservatives rallied behind
the right-wing National Front, which openly appealed to the military to
save Spain from Marxism. The
army was the key factor; by the early summer a young officers'
conspiracy was backed by Generals Emilio Mola, Manuel Goded, and,
finally, Francisco Franco. The murder of José Calvo Sotelo, the leader
of the extreme right, with the connivance of government security forces
was the final outrage for the right and the army. The Civil
War
The
rising of the military started in Morocco on July 17, 1936, and
spread to the garrisons of metropolitan Spain in the following days. The
Civil War took place because the rising was successful only in Old
Castile, in Navarre, where Carlist (monarchists) support was decisive,
and, of the larger towns, in Saragossa, Seville, Cordova, Valladolid,
and Cadiz. Galicia soon went over to the Nationalists, as did most of
Andalusia. Catalonia and the Basque provinces were loyal to the The role of the workers in defeating the rising
made their organizations the power in the Republican zone. The legal
government was bypassed or totally supplanted by local committees and
trade unions; the workers' militia replaced the dissolved army. In
many parts of Spain a social revolution took place in July 1936:
factories and farms were collectivized. The English novelist George
Orwell described Barcelona, where the CNT (anarcho-syndicalist labor
union) was all-powerful, as "a town where the working class was in
the saddle." The success of working-class control, in terms of
increased production, is difficult to estimate. This
revolution was distasteful to the Left Republicans and to the Communist
Party,
which rapidly grew in number and in political influence because it
controlled the supply of arms from the Soviet Union. In the name of an
efficient war effort and the preservation of "bourgeois"
elements in the Popular Front, the Communists pressed for a popular army
and central government control. In September-November 1936, the CNT (anarcho-syndicalist
labor union) was brought into the government of Catalonia
and into Largo Caballero's ministry in Madrid--an astonishing step for a
movement that had consistently rejected "bourgeois" politics.
The CNT militants did not approve the leaders' "surrender" and
the dismantling of the militia-backed revolution. A
small Marxist revolutionary party, the Workers' Party of Marxist
Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista; POUM),
which rejected the Popular Front in favour of a workers' government, set
off a rebellion in Barcelona in May 1937. The Communists,
Republicans, and anti-Caballero Socialists used this as an excuse to
oust Largo Caballero, who proved insufficiently pliable to Communist
demands. The government led by the Socialist doctor Juan Negrín was
a Republican-Socialist-Communist concern. The great unions, the UGT
and CNT, were replaced by the political parties. The
Communists were correct in arguing that the committee-militia system was
militarily ineffective. General Franco's army, ferried over from
Morocco, cut through the militia and arrived before Madrid by
November 1936. The successful resistance of the city, which was
stiffened by the arrival of the International Brigades and Soviet
arms, meant that the Civil War would be prolonged for two years. Victory
would go to the side with the best army, with unified political control,
and with adequate arms supply. The core of the Nationalist army was the
African army commanded by General Franco. Given the confused
political control in Republican Spain, the secure military and political
command of Franco (from October 1936) was decisive. In April 1937 he
incorporated the Falange and the Carlists into a unified movement under
his leadership. Both
sides sought help from abroad. The Republic consistently hoped that France
and Britain would allow them to acquire arms. Partly because of fear
of a general war, partly because of domestic pressures, both powers
backed nonintervention (i.e., self-imposed restriction of arms
supply by all powers). General Franco appealed immediately to Hitler
in Germany and to Mussolini in Italy, both of whom supplied aircraft
early in the war. The Germans, in return for mineral concessions,
supplied the Condor Legion (100 combat planes), and the Italians sent
ground troops; both supplied tanks and artillery. The
Western democracies protested but did nothing. The Soviet Union alone
responded to the breakdown of nonintervention by supplying arms to the
Republican side. Soviet supplies were of great importance (tanks,
aircraft, and a military mission) after October 1936. The Communist
International also organized the International Brigades. In 1938,
Soviet supplies dropped off, and the balance of arms supply was
decisively in favour of the Nationalists. Once the Popular Army replaced
the militia, the republic held Madrid and defeated two flanking attacks
in the battles of Jarama (February 1937) and Guadalajara (March 1937),
where the International Brigades decisively defeated a motorized Italian
corps. After
his failure at Madrid, General Franco transferred his effort to the
north, where the bombing of Gernika (Guernica), on April 26,
1937, by German planes outraged public opinion in the democracies:
by October 1937, General Franco had captured the industrial zone,
shortened his front, and won a decisive advantage. When
General Franco concentrated again on Madrid, the Republican army staged
its most effective offensive in the Battle of Teruel (launched Dec.
15, 1937). General Franco recovered Teruel, drove to the sea, and
committed his one strategic error in deciding on the difficult attack on
Valencia. To relieve Valencia, the Republicans attacked across
the Ebro (July 24, 1938); once more they failed to exploit the
breakthrough, and the bloody battle exhausted the Popular Army. |