Пол Престон – Franco (страница 63)
When Roatta’s news of the victory at Málaga reached Salamanca, Franco unsurprisingly showed little interest. His humiliating subordination to Mussolini had been starkly underlined. Millán Astray, who came to congratulate the Generalísimo and found him absorbed gazing at a huge wall map, exclaimed: ‘I expected to find you celebrating the victory in Málaga not here on your own looking at a map.’ Franco diminished the Italian achievement by pointing at the map and saying ‘Just look what remains to be conquered! I can’t afford the luxury of taking time off.’98 This gloomy and contrived effect of unceasing military dedication was out of tune with Franco’s normally irrepressible faith in victory. He was certainly preoccupied by the progress of the battle in the Jarama valley which he had launched just as Málaga was about to fall but he could hardly have been immune to the fact that the loss of Málaga was a fierce blow to the Republic in terms of captured territory, prisoners and weaponry. He had gained the food-producing province of Málaga and most of Granada, deprived his enemies of a strategically crucial sea port with a population of one hundred and fifty thousand people and shortened the southern front. The feigned lack of interest revealed his resentment of the disdainful Roatta and the fact that he could take no pleasure in a triumph attributed by the world’s press to Mussolini.99
The fall of Málaga provoked a major internecine crisis within the Republic. The Communists began to reveal their impatience with Largo Caballero and obliged him to accept the resignation of General Asensio, his under-secretary of war.100 Ironically, the one negative consequence for Franco of such an easy victory was the totally erroneous notion that both he and Mussolini derived of the efficacy of the Italian contingent.101 Mussolini was so delighted that he promoted Roatta to Major-General. The Duce and his Chief of Staff at the Ministry of the Army, Alberto Pariani, immediately produced ambitious plans for the Italian troops to sweep on to Almería and then through Murcia and Alicante to Valencia.102 However, Roatta’s reports to Rome on the eve of the attack on Málaga had presented a bleak picture of Italian disorganization, indiscipline and lack of technical preparation. Now he had to restrain Mussolini’s enthusiasm and persuade him that a long haul along the south coast exposed to constant flank attack would be less decisive than operations envisaged by Franco in the centre.103
Franco was happy to get Italian help on the Madrid front and quick to deflate the euphoric Queipo who was anxious to use the triumph at Málaga as the basis for a triumphal march through Eastern Andalusia towards Almería. Franco remained obsessed with Madrid and had no reason to want to give away triumphs to Queipo de Llano. Accordingly, he prohibited further advance in Andalusia, to the bitter chagrin of Queipo.104 It was, however, with some trepidation that Franco viewed the prospect of what seemed at the time like a fearsome Italian army, directed from Rome, allowing Mussolini graciously to hand him victories on a plate. It was a perception which would have disastrous consequences during the battle of Guadalajara.
At this time the nationalist press began to circulate a story which linked Franco’s destiny with the intercession of the saints. Allegedly, in the chaos of defeat, the military commander of Málaga, Colonel José Villalba Rubio, left various items of luggage behind him when he fled. In a suitcase left in his hotel was found the holy relic of the hand of St Teresa of Avila which had been stolen from the Carmelite Convent at Ronda.105 In fact, the relic was found in police custody. It was sent to Franco who kept it with him for the rest of his life. The recovery of the relic was the excuse for the exaltation of St Teresa as ‘the Saint of the Race’, the champion of Spain and her religion in the
Encouraged by the easy success which he anticipated in the south and by the availability of the Condor Legion, Franco had simultaneously renewed his efforts to take Madrid. On 6 February 1937, an army of nearly sixty thousand well-equipped men, under the direction of General Orgaz, had launched a huge attack through the Jarama valley towards the Madrid-Valencia highway to the east of the capital. Still convinced that he could capture the capital, Franco took a special interest in the campaign.108 Two days later, his determination to win would be intensified by a desire for a victory to overshadow the Italian triumph at Málaga.
Almost simultaneously, Mussolini had sent a new Ambassador to Nationalist Spain, the emollient Roberto Cantalupo, who arrived shortly after the battle for Málaga.109 It was a reflection of Franco’s seething resentment at the behaviour of Roatta and Mussolini over the conquest of Málaga that he kept Cantalupo waiting for days before receiving him. Cantalupo got a sense that, although everyone knew that Málaga had been captured by the Italians, no one said so. ‘Here’, he reported to Ciano on 17 February, ‘the coin of gratitude circulates hardly at all.’ When he finally met the Caudillo for an informal meeting, Cantalupo got the impression that Franco believed in ultimate victory but was no longer certain that it was anything other than a long way off. If anything, the Caudillo seemed to prefer the prospect of a long war although he put off explaining why for a future meeting. He did make it clear that he would not contemplate a negotiated peace.110
The implicit conflict between Mussolini’s urge for the rapid and spectacular defeat of the Republic and Franco’s gradual approach quickly came into the open. Four days after the fall of Málaga, Roatta being wounded, he sent his Chief of Staff, Colonel Emilio Faldella, to visit the Generalísimo in Salamanca and discuss the next operation in which the
When Faldella was received by Franco at 8 p.m. on 13 February, the usually polite Generalísimo ostentatiously failed to thank him for the Italian action at Málaga and said ‘the note has surprised me, because it is a real imposition’. The expected success in the Jarama gave the Caudillo the confidence to speak in stronger terms than previously to Faldella, who was after all the acting military representative of Mussolini. ‘When all is said and done’, Franco told Faldella, ‘Italian troops have been sent here without requesting my authorization. First I was told that companies of volunteers were coming to be incorporated into Spanish battalions. Then I was asked for them to be formed into independent battalions on their own and I agreed. Next senior officers and generals arrived to command them, and finally already-formed units began to arrive. Now you want to oblige me to allow these troops to fight together under General Roatta’s orders, when my plans were altogether different.’ Faldella replied that the reasoning behind all this was simply that Mussolini was trying to make good the failure of the Germans to supply troops to which Franco responded: ‘This is a war of a special kind, that has to be fought with exceptional methods so that such a numerous mass cannot be used all at once, but spread out over several fronts it would be more useful.’112 These remarks revealed not just Franco’s resentments about Italian aid, but also the limitations of his strategic vision. His preference for piecemeal actions over a wide area reflected both his own practical military experiences in a small-scale colonial war and his desire to conquer Spain slowly and so consolidate his political supremacy.113