Franco. Paul Preston
and was assuming that he himself would play a major role in moulding the political future after the war.31 Many years later, Queipo de Llano, on criticizing Franco, was asked by the monarchist Eugenio Vegas Latapié why he had voted for him. ‘And who else could we appoint?’, he replied. ‘It couldn’t be Cabanellas. He was a convinced Republican and everyone knew that he was a freemason. Nor could we name Mola because we would have lost the war. And my prestige was seriously impaired.’32 Nonetheless, Queipo made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the decision that had been taken.33
The half-heartedness shown by some of Franco’s peers about his elevation was to have an immediate impact on his conduct of the war. It is impossible to say with total certainty when exactly Franco took the decision to direct his troops towards Toledo. The timing is crucial to any assessment of his motives. His official biographer has claimed, without any proof, that it was before the airfield meeting at which he was elected as Generalísimo. Such a timing would conveniently diminish any suspicion of self-serving about the decision.34 However, the decision became a matter of urgency only after the capture of Maqueda and that did not take place until the early evening of 21 September. The Salamanca meeting started in the morning and Franco and his staff had to make an early start to travel there from Cáceres. In fact, there is little doubt that the decision was taken sometime after the fall of Maqueda and therefore after the meeting of the generals at the airfield.35 Whether taken in the evening of 21 September or later, it was after Franco had been elected Generalísimo. He did not draw up specific orders until three days later.36 Whenever Franco made his decision, which Mola’s secretary described as ‘completely personal’, he did so in a context of knowledge of the events of 21 September.37
The meeting on that day had left him with gnawing doubts about his election as Generalísimo. Behind the near unanimous vote and the expressions of support for Franco could be discerned coolness and hesitations on the part of the other generals. The simple election to the status of primus inter pares was merely a step on the road to absolute power and there was still some distance to go. At the time, it was assumed, even by those involved in his election, that what they were doing was merely guaranteeing the unity of command necessary for victory and putting it temporarily in the hands of the most successful general amongst them.38 The agreement to keep the decision secret until it was formally approved and published by the Junta de Burgos reflected their doubts. It would have been entirely characteristic of Franco to seek to tip the balance by the propaganda coup of the relief of the Alcázar. If that is so, the soundness of his judgement that further efforts were required was confirmed when several days went by and nothing happened about his election being announced formally.
The silence was rightly interpreted by Kindelán as a symptom of the lack of conviction of some of the generals at the meeting. Cabanellas was procrastinating precisely because he feared the implications of dictatorial powers being granted to Franco. In the meanwhile, Nicolás Franco, who had recently arrived in Cáceres from Lisbon, brought the news that the German and Italian envoys to Portugal had told him that their governments wanted to see a single command and preferably in the hands of Franco. Nicolás also used his own recent encounter with Johannes Bernhardt to overcome his brother’s apparent qualms about taking on political responsibilities. The lure of being Head of State, the interlocutor of Hitler and Mussolini, must have been seductive, as Nicolás seems to have perceived. However, even more than with the single command, it could be dangerous to be seen to be bidding for such power. With his customary caution, Franco preferred to let others make the running and wait for the new honour to be thrust upon him.
Accordingly, Kindelán, Nicolás Franco, Yagüe and Millán Astray proposed a further meeting at which the powers of the new Generalísimo would be clearly laid out and a proposal made that the post carried with it the Headship of State. Worried about his brother’s hesitations, Nicolás asked Yagüe to put pressure on him. On 27 September, Yagüe told Franco that if he refused to seek the single command, the Legion would seek another candidate, a prospect which decisively guaranteed that he would seek full powers for himself.39 By the time that such a meeting could take place, Franco would have chalked up the great propaganda victory of the relief of the Alcázar at Toledo.
It has been suggested that Franco’s attitude to the garrison at Toledo was affected by bitter memories of his own inability to help the soldiers trapped at Nador in July 1921 after the disaster of Annual.40 The fact that he had been a cadet at Toledo may also have influenced him but would scarcely have justified the decision to make a strategically secondary objective into the first priority. There is little doubt that the relief of the siege would have appealed to the romantic side of a soldier deeply imbued with the ethos of Beau Geste, all the more so as it could be made into a tale which might have come straight out of the legends of El Cid. However, when so much was at stake, the ruthlessly pragmatic Franco would not have let himself be swayed by such considerations unless there were other advantages to be gained.
In December 1936, he revealed more of the truth than perhaps he intended when he told a Portuguese journalist that ‘we committed a military error and we committed it deliberately. Taking Toledo required diverting our forces from Madrid. For the Spanish Nationalists, Toledo represented a political issue that had to be resolved’.41 Whatever Franco’s motives, his decision did his personal ambitions no harm although it was to have serious consequences for the Nationalist cause. By permitting Madrid to organize its defences, the diversion was to swing the advantage back to the Republic almost as starkly as the crossing of the Straits had given it to the military rebels.
In fact, the pace of the Army of Africa had already been slowed considerably. It took as long to get the 80 km from Talavera to Toledo as it had to travel the nearly 400 km from Seville to Talavera, a reflection of the fact that the Republic was gradually beginning to get some trained men into the field.42 This was reason enough to hasten the attack on the capital. Nevertheless, on 25 September, three columns of the Moroccan Army, since 24 September under the overall command of the African veteran and Carlist sympathizer, General Varela, swept to the north of Toledo. Under the individual commands of Colonel Asensio, Major Castejón and Colonel Fernando Barrón, they cut off the road to Madrid and then moved south against the city on the following day. After fierce fighting, the militia began to retreat. On 27 September, the world’s war correspondents, ‘who previously had been permitted to “participate” in the bloodiest battles of the war’, were prevented from accompanying the attacking Legionaires and Regulares as they unleashed another massacre. No prisoners were taken. The streets were strewn with corpses and literally ran with rivulets of blood which gathered in puddles. The American journalist Webb Miller told the US Ambassador that he had seen the beheaded corpses of militiamen. Hand grenades were tossed in among the helpless wounded Republicans in the San Juan Bautista hospital. On the next day, 28 September, General Varela entered the Alcázar to be greeted with Moscardó’s laconic report ‘Sin novedad en el Alcázar, mi general’ (all quiet in the Alcázar, general).43
On the evening of Sunday 27 September, in the flush of the victory at Toledo, Franco, Yagüe and Millán Astray addressed a frenetically cheering crowd from the balcony of the Palacio de los Golfines in Cáceres. Franco spoke hesitantly, his fluting voice anything but inspirational. Yagüe, recalling the threatening conversation which he had had with Franco earlier in the day, was carried away with enthusiasm. He declared vehemently ‘tomorrow we will have in him our Generalísimo, the Head of State’. Millán Astray said ‘Our people, our Army, guided by Franco, are on the way to victory’. There were parades by the Falange and the Legion