Eighty years ago, Franco's fakers field fifth columnists, felines and food
The last bastion of Republican
Spain, the historic capital Madrid, fell to Franco’s forces with minimal
resistance after a siege of two years. In a neat exercise in transforming propaganda into history, the
credit was given to the Nationalist “Fifth Column” in the city. Two years
previously General Mola had advanced on Madrid in four columns and boasted that
he had a fifth within the city already. It did not exist then and it did not
exist in 1939. Naturally existing Franco supporters and opportunistic adherents
to his cause came out to fill the vacuum left by the Republic’s total military exhaustion,
exacerbated by internal political collapse. They claimed that they had overthrown
the Republic but in reality the end of the siege was purely a military victory. The phrase "fifth column" became even more useful as a
short-hand for the enemy within. The collapse of democracy across Europe in the face of Fascism in the eighteen months that followed seemed to many to be clear proof that the "fifth column" did exist. Less successful was the
Nationalists’ attempt to coin another phrase for the unconventional support that
they could muster. A gullible journalist was persuaded that the Nationalists
had gathered a “shock force” of stray cats from around the country that they
would deploy to dispose of Madrid’s rat population which had swollen during the
siege. Fifteen hundred lorries laden with food for Madrid's hungry population were rather more effective in
securing a good reception for the Nationalists.
Prime minister Neville
Chamberlain showed himself adept at tactically spectacular gesture politics. It
was announced that the establishment of the volunteer Territorial Army was to
be doubled in size to 340,000 men, thus doubling the number of divisions available
for service according to off-the-record press briefings. This was received with
great enthusiasm by government supporters in the House of Commons as evidence of
Chamberlain’s new-found resolve to take on Germany. In reality practically none of the details of
the move had been worked out. Nothing had been undertaken to ensure that the
new soldiers would have any equipment. And, of course, it all depended on men
actually volunteering to join the Territorial Army.
The Japanese invasion of China
ground on remorselessly with another battle that pitted weak Chinese forces
against Japan’s highly organised and well-equipped units. The Xiushi river had
held back the Japanese advance into the South Eastern provinces in 1938 but now
a full-scale Japanese amphibious assault broke the Chinese defensive line. The
Japanese army followed this up by storming the provincial capital of Nanchang
which also severed one of the remaining rail links supplying Chinese forces in
the interior of the country. The conquerors proceeded to destroy the main buildings
of the city leaving it in flames.
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