This seemed possible because May 1937 had seen the defeat of the revolutionary elements within the Republic – the FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica), the extremist wing of the anarchist movement, and the anti-Stalinist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) – and the marginalization of the rhetorically revolutionary wing of the PSOE under Largo Caballero. However, that did not mean that any of these groups accepted their fate with docility. As military defeats mounted – the loss of the north, and of Teruel, and the division of the Republic in two – their resentments would grow and be focused increasingly on Negrín and the Communists. As far as Besteiro was concerned, his desire to be the man who brought peace was shattered on the rock of Negrín’s determination to fight on to victory. Since Negrín believed, rightly, that only a major military triumph by the Republic would bring Franco to the negotiating table, he had no interest in fostering Besteiro’s ambitions. The highly touchy Besteiro, however, perceived an insult in Negrín’s understandable failure to follow up on his London trip.10 Disappointed that his inflated sense of the importance of his own mission was not matched by Negrín, Besteiro began to harbour a fierce grudge against the new Prime Minister. The fall of the Largo Caballero government in mid-May 1937 opened up the post of ambassador in France. Besteiro aspired to the Spanish Embassy in Paris in order to seek French mediation in the war, but Negrín’s commitment to resistance to the last against Franco made such an appointment impossible.
In the wake of the failure of his peace mission, Besteiro returned to his university post and his position in the Madrid Ayuntamiento. As a city councillor, he worked hard on the problems of the besieged capital to the detriment of his health. He was tortured by the idea that mistakes made in the early 1930s, particularly Socialist participation in government, had been responsible for the war. He was also appalled by the violence of the conflict and especially by the sound of firing squads and gunshots in the night – which he took to be the sounds of political assassinations.11 In contrast, in the last months of the war, he seemed oblivious to reports of the Francoist repression in captured areas.12
Initially, Besteiro’s stance as a silent but critical spectator of the Republican government had puzzled many rank-and-file Socialists, although as the war progressed, his stock began to rise again. The departure from government of Largo Caballero in May 1937 had provoked considerable anti-Communist sentiment within the PSOE in Madrid and much of the UGT. Similarly, the removal in April 1938 of the ever pessimistic Prieto from his post as Minister of Defence had intensified anti-Communism within Socialist ranks. This was unfair. The Communists had certainly wanted to see a more positive and dynamic person as Minister of Defence, but they had been keen to see Prieto kept in the government. They feared, as actually was to happen, that his spleen would quickly be directed against them. As it turned out, it was Prieto who refused a different ministry in the cabinet formed on 5 April. Fomented even further by Prieto’s embittered and tendentious interpretations of what had happened, the growing resentment of the Communists would undermine the principal bulwark of the Republican war effort.13
Besteiro, like Prieto, conveniently ignored the immense contribution of the Communist Party to the survival of the Republic. A key component of the People’s Army, the party had lost thousands of militants either killed, seriously wounded or captured as territory fell to the Francoists. By the end of 1937, some 60 per cent of the PCE’s militants were in the People’s Army. It was calculated that around 50,000 had been captured by the rebels after the fall of Málaga, Santander and the Asturias. Another 20,000 had been lost in the course of the battle of the Ebro and the last-ditch defence of Catalonia.14 On 18 February 1939, General Rojo sent Negrín an analysis of the possibilities of maintaining resistance in the centre-south zone. In his covering letter, he wrote of the PCE:
I don’t need to tell you that of all the political parties, it has been and remains the only one with which I sympathize. I believe that they are making a big mistake, even in assuming the general responsibility for the field commanders and the overall leadership of this phase of the struggle, because they are going to ensure that the efforts of the enemy and from all countries will be concentrated on them even further. They will end up ensuring the definitive destruction of their party, the only one that is relatively healthy within our political organization.15
In general, the anarchists resented the Communist pre-eminence in the armed forces. This was largely to do with the fact that, in endeavouring to create a centralized and effective war effort, the revolutionary ambitions of the anarchists had been reined in, sometimes brutally. This was perceived by all sectors of the libertarian movement as simply a desire on the part of the Communists to attain a monopoly of power, and the underlying military necessity was utterly ignored. On the other hand, there were numerous complaints of anarchists being murdered. It was certainly the case that there was considerable hostility between Communists and anarchists within the army, in part because of the harsh discipline imposed by Communist commanders. Summary executions of deserters and of commanders deemed to be ineffective were not uncommon. The anarchists alleged that a Communist terror was carried out in front-line units, complaining that there were ‘thousands and thousands of comrades who confess that they feel more fear of being assassinated by the adversary alongside them than of being killed in battle by the enemies opposite’. In a spirit of revenge, in the Levante, lists were drawn up of the names of Communists within military units. Those listed would become targets after the Casado coup. In fact, Communist influence within the armed forces was considerably less than that alleged by the anarchists.16
Forgetting or perhaps unconcerned by the need for the Republic to be defended militarily, after his return from London Besteiro had become even more anti-Communist and commensurately less hostile to the Francoists. The main target of his obsession was Negrín, whom he frequently accused of being a Communist. This view was increasingly shared by many within the Socialist Party. Largo Caballero, for instance, was outraged when Julián Zugazagoitia, then Negrín’s Minister of the Interior, had prohibited a meeting in Alicante at which, it was feared, he planned to denounce the Prime Minister and thereby undermine the war effort.17 Thus the followers of Largo Caballero, Prieto and Besteiro were converging in their anti-Communism and could count on the growing sympathy of the President, Manuel Azaña. Negrín, overwhelmed by his efforts, as premier, to improve the international situation of the Republic and, as Minister of Defence, to run the war effort, did not have the time to combat the corrosive effect of the growing anti-Communism which, in some cases, overcame the higher priority of the defence of the Republic and thus contributed to division, despair and defeatism.18
Besteiro’s hostility to the Communists masked his more generalized lack