Battle of Teruel
Battle of Teruel | |||||||
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Part of the Spanish Civil War | |||||||
![]() Republican soldiers at Teruel, 1938 | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Domingo Rey d'Harcourt (POW ) | |||||||
Strength | |||||||
40,000[2] 100,000[3][4] |
Teruel garrison: 4,000[5]-less than 10,000[2] Reinforcements: 100,000 [6] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
~60,000[7] | ~57,000[8] |
The Battle of Teruel was fought in and around the city of
With his superiority in men and material, the Nationalist leader Francisco Franco regained Teruel. This battle became the military turning point of the war.[9][10]
Background
The
Indalecio Prieto, the Republic's Minister of War, wanted a spectacular victory to reflect well on his tenure and to show how the army could function under his reorganization.[12] A victory at Teruel would also aid the government of Prime Minister Juan Negrín in its quest to take over the industries of Catalonia from their workers. Lastly, Republican intelligence learned that Franco intended to start a major offensive against Madrid in the Guadalajara sector on 18 December and so the Republicans wanted to divert the Nationalists away from the Madrid area. The Republic, therefore, started the battle on 15 December.[12]
Terrain
Teruel, in southern Aragon, had a population of 20,000[13] and was the remote capital of a poor province.[13] It had been fortified in 1170 to buffer the warring Moorish and Christian states. In 1937, it served essentially the same purpose by separating the Republicans in Valencia from the Nationalists in Zaragoza.[14] Because of its elevation in the mountains (3,050 ft; 930 m),[15] it usually has the lowest annual winter temperature in Spain. The town was a walled and mountain-ringed natural fortress[15] on a high knoll above the confluence of the Turia and Alfambra rivers. It is surrounded by a geological potpourri of scragged gorges, tooth-shaped peaks and twisted ridge fingers. West of the town, the Calatayud highway runs up a slight gradient to a pancake-flat plain around the village of Concud, about 3 mi (4.8 km) away.[16] A key position was the ridge to the west of the town known as La Muela de Teruel (Teruel's Tooth).[13] Teruel's defensive position was much improved by previously prepared trenches and barbed wire because of its position protruding into Republican territory.
Combatants
The Spanish Republican Army was under the command of Juan Hernández Saravia, who had reorganised the army almost from scratch.[17] The Republicans had a total of 100,000 men in two armies.[12] The Army of the Levante was to conduct the main part of the assault supported by the Army of the East. Saravia wanted the coup de main against Teruel to be an all-Spanish operation without the assistance of the International Brigades. Among his commanders was the trustworthy and able communist commander Enrique Líster and so Saravia chose Lister's division to lead the first assault.[18]
Colonel Domingo Rey d'Harcourt was the Nationalist commander at Teruel when the battle began.[19] The Teruel salient had a Nationalist defending force of about 9,500 men, including civilians. After the attack began, Rey d'Harcourt eventually consolidated his remaining defenders into a garrison to defend the town. Teruel's Nationalist garrison numbered between 2,000 and 6,000 according to various estimates.[20] The garrison numbered probably about 4,000, half of them civilians.[21]
Battle
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Batalla_de_Teruel.png/500px-Batalla_de_Teruel.png)
Lister's Republican division attacked Teruel without any preliminary aerial or
Republican advances and siege
By December 21, the Republican forces were in the town.
Nationalist relief attempts
Franco cancelled the Guadalajara offensive on December 23, but the relief force could not begin its attack until December 29. Franco could only send messages to Rey d'Harcourt to hold out at all costs.[26] In the meantime, the Republicans pressed home their attack in atrocious weather. The Nationalist counterattack began on schedule on December 29, with the experienced Generals Antonio Aranda and José Enrique Varela in command. The German Condor Legion covered the attack. By New Year's Eve, a supreme effort allowed the Nationalists to be on the La Muela Heights[25] and actually to break into the town and to take the bullring and the railway station, but they could not hold their gains in the town.[27] Then, the weather actually turned for the worse, with the start of a four-day blizzard in which 120 cm of snow fell and temperatures of -18 °C occurred. The fighting ground to a halt as guns and machines froze, and the troops suffered terribly from frostbite. The Nationalists suffered the most, as they did not have warm clothing.[citation needed] Many amputations were performed to remove frostbitten limbs.
Franco continued to pour in men and machines, and the tide of the battle slowly started to turn. However, the Republicans pressed home their siege, and by
Just over a year later, the Republicans, in one of their last acts of the war, killed Rey d'Harcourt and the bishop, along with 41 other prisoners in February 1939.[29] After Rey d'Harcourt's surrender, the civilian population of Teruel had been evacuated, and the Republicans became the besieged and the Nationalists the besiegers.[30]
Nationalist counteroffensive
After Rey d'Harcourt's surrender, the Nationalist buildup began to tell on the Republican forces. With the weather clearing, the Nationalists started a new advance on 17 January 1938. Two days later, the Republican leadership finally gave up its scruples about the Battle of Teruel being an all-Spanish operation and ordered the International Brigades to join the struggle.
Both high commands were now in heated trains near the battlefield and directing their troops in the final part of the battle. Slowly but surely, the Nationalists advanced, and the La Muela heights fell to them. The Republican forces launched fierce counterattacks on 25 January and the next two days, but gains were temporary. Finally, on 7 February, the Nationalists
The final battle began on 18 February. Aranda and Yagüe cut off the town from the north and then surrounded it, as the Republicans had accomplished in December. On 20 February, Teruel was cut off from the former Republican capital in
The Nationalists found 10,000 Republican corpses in Teruel after the battle was over.[36]
Aftermath
The Battle of Teruel exhausted the resources of the Republican Army. The
Franco wasted little time and began the
Laurie Lee, a British poet and writer who, by his account, served in the International Brigade, summed up the Republican strategy of attacking Teruel: "The gift of Teruel at Christmas had become for the Republicans no more than a poisoned toy. It was meant to be the victory that would change the war; it was indeed the seal of defeat".[43]
Casualties
Casualties from the Battle of Teruel are difficult to estimate. The Nationalist relief force lost about 14,000 dead, 16,000 wounded and 17,000 sick. In the original Teruel defensive force, including the garrison, casualties were about 9,500, nearly all of whom were dead or captured, which gives a total of 56,500 casualties for the Nationalists. The Republicans lost a large number of prisoners.[44] Round figures would be Nationalists 57,000 and Republicans 60,000, for a total of about 110,000.
Celebrities
Mathews, Hemingway, Robeson and the British politicians have been mentioned previously, and the battle certainly attracted many other such celebrities. One of them was the Soviet spy Kim Philby, who was nominally a correspondent for The Times covering the war from the Nationalist side. Evidently, he was already under Moscow's orders in Spain but wrote glowing reports about Franco.[45] Near Teruel in December 1937, a shell hit an automobile in which Philby and three other journalists (Bradish Johnson, Eddie Neil and Ernest Sheepshanks) were riding. Philby was the only survivor. Franco personally decorated Philby, who was greatly exhilarated.[45]
See also
- Man's Hope (French: L'Espoir), a 1937 novel by André Malraux which deals with the battle
- Espoir: Sierra de Teruel, a film based on the Malraux novel
- List of Spanish Nationalist military equipment of the Spanish Civil War
- List of Spanish Republican military equipment of the Spanish Civil War
Notes
- ^ Hugh Purcell, The Spanish Civil War (part of the Documentary History Series) (1973), p. 95.
- ^ a b Beevor, Antony. The battle for Spain; the Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2006. p. 316
- ^ Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2001. p. 768
- ^ Jackson, Gabriel. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1967. p. 399
- ^ Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2001. p. 770
- ^ Beevor, Antony. The battle for Spain; the Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2006. p. 321
- ^ Beevor, Antony. The battle for Spain; the Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2006. p. 322
- ^ Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2001. p. 773
- ^ a b Hugh Purcell, p. 95.
- ^ Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War, an Illustrated Chronicle 1936-39 (New York, 1986), p. 149.
- Peter Wyden, The Passionate War (1983), p. 421.
- ^ a b c d Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1961), p. 504.
- ^ a b c Hugh Thomas, p. 505
- ^ Michener, 697
- ^ a b Peter Wyden, p. 421
- ^ Cecil Eby, Between the Bullet and the Lie, American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, (1969), p. 197
- ^ Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1986), p. 788.
- ^ Hugh Thomas (1961), p. 505.
- ^ Hugh Thomas, (1961), p. 505.
- ^ a b Peter Wyden, p. 425.
- ^ Hugh Thomas, p. 507
- ^ a b Hugh Thomas, (1986), p. 789
- ^ Hugh Thomas, (1986), pp. 789-790.
- ^ Peter Wyden, pp. 421-425, inclusive.
- ^ a b Hugh Thomas, pp. 507-508.
- ^ Hugh Thomas, p. 505-507, inclusive.
- ^ Hugh Purcell, p. 96.
- ^ Hugh Thomas, p. 507-508.
- ^ Hugh Thomas, p. 577
- ^ Hugh Thomas, p. 508
- ^ Hugh Thomas, (1986)
- ^ Peter Wyden, pp. 433-434
- ^ Hugh Thomas, (1986) pp. 792-793.
- ^ Hugh Thomas, (1961) pp. 511-514.
- ^ Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939, (1965), p. 508.
- ^ Hugh Thomas, (1961), pp. 513-515, inclusive.
- ^ Carl Geiser, Prisoners of the Good Fight, The Spanish Civil War, 1936-39, (1986), p. 42.
- ^ Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939, (1965), p. 407
- ^ Hugh Purcell, p. 98, Colonel Vicente Rojo Lluch, as quoted in Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Revolution, (1970)
- ^ E. H. Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War (1984), p. 66.
- ^ Carl Geiser, p. 42.
- ^ Hugh Thomas (1986) pp. 798-803, inclusive.
- ^ Laurie Lee, Moment of War, A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War, (1991), p. 158.
- ^ Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (2001), p. 773
- ^ a b Verne W. Newton, The Butchers Embrace, The Philby Conspirators in Washington, (London, 1991), p. 51-2.
References
- Beevor, Antony. The battle for Spain; the Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2006.
- Jackson, Gabriel. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1967
- Purcell, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War, (part of the Documentary History Series) (1973) ISBN 0-399-11238-3(hardcover)
- Russell, Ramsey, W. "The Battle Of Teruel," Southern Quarterly (1965) 3#4 pp 334-354.
- ISBN 0-671-75876-4(paperback)
External links
- Battle of Teruel Photographs, Capa, Robert (1939) International Center of Photography. Retrieved 2010-09-23.