Пол Престон – Franco (страница 66)

The creation of a single party was clearly on Franco’s agenda but he was for the moment totally absorbed by events at the Madrid front. With his forces depleted in the Jarama and in desperate need of a diversion, Franco was anxious for Faldella to implement the proposal made on 13 February for an attack on Guadalajara. Negotiations between the two sides revealed differences over the scope of the enterprise. Roatta and his staff quickly came to suspect that Franco did not want the Italian troops to secure a decisive victory but only to alleviate the pressure on Orgaz’s forces after the bloody stalemate over the Jarama. The Italians regarded the Corpo di Truppe Volontarie as a force of elite shock troops and were determined not to see it worn down in the kind of piecemeal attrition favoured by Franco.¹⁵ Anxious to get the Italians into action, on 1 March, Franco effectively agreed to the Italian plan to close the circle around Madrid, with a joint attack south-west from Sigüenza towards Guadalajara backed up by a north-eastern push by Orgaz towards Alcalá de Henares. He assured Roatta that his forces in the Jarama would operate at the same time as the Italian assault provided that they could be reinforced by one of the newly formed Italo-Spanish mixed brigades. Aware of the weakness of Orgaz’s depleted troops, and fearing that they might not be ready for some days, on 4 March Roatta sent the second mixed brigade to strengthen them.¹⁶

On 5 March, Roatta wrote to Franco, confirming what had been agreed four days earlier and informing him that the Italian forces would start their advance on 8 March. On the same day, Roatta received a reply from Franco couched in guarded and ambiguous terms which revealed a lack of optimism about the Italian hopes of a decisive break-through. Although accepting that Orgaz’s forces would move to link up with the CTV at Pozuelo del Rey to the south-east of Alcalá de Henares, the Generalísimo implied that the extent of their advance would depend entirely on how much resistance they might meet along the way. Since Franco’s letter made no mention of the date of the attack, Roatta took this to signify that he had accepted 8 March.¹⁷ This seemed to be confirmed when, on 6 March, one of Orgaz’s commanders, General Saliquet, ordered an advance in the Jarama towards Pozuelo del Rey for 8 March. On 7 March, the eve of the battle, Roatta telegrammed Rome to say that he was still expecting the supporting action promised by the Spanish forces.¹⁸

Despite different immediate expectations of what would come of the attack, both sides certainly went into the operation talking in similar terms of closing the circle around Madrid.¹⁹ Deceived by the ease of his triumph at Málaga, Roatta was convinced that he could reach Guadalajara before the Republicans could mount any serious counter-attack. Nearly forty-five thousand troops were gathered in three groups for the main attack. 31,218 Italians in three divisions were to be flanked by two smaller Spanish brigades consisting of Legionnaires, Moors and Requetés, jointly under the command of General Moscardó, the hero of the Alcázar. Amply equipped with tanks, pieces of heavy artillery, planes and trucks, it was the most heavily armed motorised force yet to go into action in the war.²⁰ However, its advantages were diminished by technical deficiencies in the equipment and inadequate preparation of the troops. Mussolini wanted the three Italian divisions to act as a unit because he hoped that they would score up another victory which, like Málaga, would be attributed by the world to Fascism. The mood in the Nationalist headquarters was notably more pessimistic than that of Roatta and his staff. There was considerable resentment among the Nationalist officer corps of sarcastic remarks made by the Italians about why it had taken so long to capture a defenceless city like Madrid.²¹

On 8 March, the Black Flames division under the Italian General Amerigo Coppi broke through the thin Republican defences using the guerra celere tactics that had brought Roatta such success at Málaga. However, the Republic was better organized around Madrid than at Málaga. Moreover, as it became apparent by the evening of that first day that the Jarama front was quiet, the Republicans were able to strip that area unhindered and concentrate their forces against the Italians. As Coppi moved rapidly towards Madrid, dangerously exposing his left flank and over-extending his lines of communication, Republican reinforcements moved up unmolested by Orgaz’s troops. The Italian position was further endangered by the slowness of the Spanish columns on their right.

In general, the Black Shirts were surprised by the strength of Republican resistance and by the weather. Inadequately clothed, many dressed in colonial uniforms, they were caught in heavy snow and sleet. Their aeroplanes stranded on muddy improvised airfields, they made excellent targets for the Republican Air Force flying from permanent runways. Light Italian tanks with fixed machine guns were shown to be vulnerable to the Republic’s Russian T-26 with their revolving turret-mounted cannon.²² Now desperate for the Spanish supporting attack from the south, Roatta sent violent protests to Franco who feigned powerlessness, informing him that he had had to exert all his authority to oblige Orgaz to make a token action on 9 March which would be followed by a full-scale attack on the following day. It was extremely implausible that Orgaz would oppose an order from Franco. Moreover, the attack which began on 9 March was on the tiniest scale and it was not followed up on either 10 or 11 March. On 11 March, Orgaz was replaced as overall commander of the armies around Madrid by Saliquet. On 12 March, Varela was replaced by General Fernando Barrón. On the same day, Roatta sent a message to Franco to say that, without the guarantee of some diversionary activity in the Jarama, he could not move since his advance was being blocked by Republican units taken from the Jarama front.²³

The Italians later discovered that, until well into the battle, Franco had refused to give the order for Orgaz and Varela to advance in the Jarama, despite the fact that Barroso pleaded with him to do so. Franco tried to obscure this by having Roatta and Cantalupo informed that he had relieved Orgaz and Varela of their immediate commands specifically as a reprimand for the inaction of the Nationalist troops on the Jarama front. A slightly placated Mussolini telegrammed Roatta ‘I hope that Saliquet will not imitate the immorality of his predecessor’.²⁴ However, there was no question of Orgaz and Varela being in disgrace. Varela was promoted to Major-General on 15 March and posted to take command of the Avila division and Orgaz was given the crucial job of cresting the new mass army which Franco needed.²⁵ The fact that Franco felt able to move them suggests that he did not view the promised attack from the Jarama as a major priority.^* Having removed Varela and Orgaz, Franco and Saliquet promised Roatta an attack in the Jarama valley for 12 March. This also failed to materialize. On that day, Republican troops counter-attacked and the Italian advance was halted with heavy losses just south-east of the village of Brihuega. Finally, there were attacks on 13, 14 and 15 March but on a very small scale.²⁶

With the lines more or less stabilised, a much chastened Roatta accepted that the advance would get no further. Aware that his troops were at their best moving forward but easily demoralised when under attack, he was anxious to avoid a total debacle. Franco, however, avoided Roatta’s frantic requests for a meeting in Salamanca. Finally, during the afternoon of 15 March, the Italian general caught up with Franco, Mola and Kindelán at Arcos de Medinaceli near the front. Roatta requested permission to withdraw his troops from the attack. His hope was that the small advance made could now be defended by Spanish troops. He recognized the poor defensive qualities of his own men and suggested that perhaps they could continue to advance further outside the capital, from north to south. The Generalísimo refused outright.

Franco was either culpably deficient in hard information or else maliciously determined to use the Italians as pawns in his preferred tactic of attrition. Contrary to all the evidence, he insisted that the Republic was ‘militarily and politically on the verge of defeat’ and that ‘the complete solution be sought in the region of Madrid, with the continuation pure and simple of the operations in course’. Roatta argued that further operations on the immediate Madrid front were doomed to failure given the apparent paralysis of the Nationalist forces in the Jarama, the sheer scale of Republican resistance and the exhaustion of the CTV. Franco simply refused to budge. He had had to accept the imposition of a joint general staff, the deployment of autonomous Italian units, the humiliating insinuation that Mussolini could run his war better than he could and the possibility that the victory would be won by the Italians to the detriment of his own political ambitions. His reluctance to help Roatta, either by fulfilling his promise for the attack from the Jarama or by relieving his troops in the line, smacked of revenge. He was rubbing the Italians’ noses in their earlier arrogant confidence that they could take Madrid alone and that the advance on Guadalajara would be a walk-over. He certainly seemed to be determined not to make any sacrifices of his own troops and happy to let the Italians exhaust themselves in a bloodbath with the Republicans.