Siege of the Alcázar of Toledo
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
Gijón - Oviedo - Alcázar of Toledo - Mérida - Badajoz - Guipúzcoa - Mallorca - Sierra Guadalupe - Talavera de la Reina - Madrid - Road to Coruña - Málaga - Jarama - Guadalajara - War in the north ( Durango , Guernica , Santander ) - Brunete - Belchite - Teruel - Cabo de Palos - Aragon - Ebro - Catalonia
The siege of the Alcázar of Toledo , which lasted from late July to late September 1936, was one of the most important media events at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War . The "liberation" of the militarily rather insignificant fortress by Franco's army became the founding myth of the Francoist state - two days later Franco declared himself a generalísimo . The siege was also extensively staged as propaganda by the media apparatus of the fascist allies Germany and Italy .
Historical course
Toledo was deep in Republican territory shortly after the Civil War began in July 1936. The military governor of Toledo, Colonel José Moscardó , sided with the rebels against the republican militias and holed up for several months with around 100 officers and soldiers, 800 Civil Guard, Falange members and a handful of cadets from the Infantry Academy of Toledo (the number and importance of the Cadets was later glorified by nationalist propaganda) in the nearby fortress of the Alcázar.
In addition, about 550 women and children of the fighters were in the Alcázar and several dozen republican hostages, including the civil governor Toledos. The hostages were apparently killed during the siege. At the time of the uprising, the cadets from the military school had already been taken off for their summer vacation, so that only a handful of them actually took part in the defense of the Alcázar. When Toledo was taken by the Francoist troops under General José Enrique Varela , there was a cruel massacre of Republican soldiers and the civilian population. Significantly, war correspondents were not allowed during the last attack on the city.
The Republican forces numbered about 8,000 FAI , CNT and UGT militiamen . They had several artillery pieces, some armored vehicles and 2 or 3 tanks. The Republican Air Force flew reconnaissance flights for the Air Force and bombed the Alcázar a total of 35 times.
The military importance of the city of Toledo and the Alcázar was minor for both sides. Franco's decision to withdraw elite troops from the Madrid Front for several weeks to liberate the Alcázar gave the Republican government time to use military countermeasures to prevent the rapid capture of the capital. This, however, gave Franco enough time to secure his position as leader of the insurrectionary movement. Immediately after the siege was over, he was proclaimed leader ("caudillo") of the military junta.
siege
21 July
At 7:00 a.m., the commander of the Military Academy, José Moscardó , read out a statement declaring martial law. Orders were given to arrest the prominent Republican leaders of Toledo . However, only the prison director was arrested.
The republican troops coming from Madrid first reached the Tavera hospice in the suburbs of Toledo. However, since they came under heavy fire from this building, they directed their attack on the arms factory. A detachment of 200 men from the Civil Guard was stationed in the hospice and began negotiating surrender. During the negotiations, the Guardia Civil forces managed to move several trucks loaded with ammunition from the factory to the Alcázar before evacuating and destroying the factory.
July 22nd to August 13th
Until July 22nd, the republican troops controlled almost all of Toledo and tried to bring about the abandonment of the Alcázar by artillery fire and starvation. During the siege, the trapped people limited themselves to passive defense and only returned fire if they were attacked themselves.
August 14th to September 17th
On August 14, Republican troops changed tactics after discovering that the defenders on the north side of the Alcázar were weakened. During the next five weeks, they attacked the military government 11 times in vain. The first signs of the advancing nationalist troops appeared on August 22nd, when a plane sent by Franco dropped leaflets over the Alcázar, promising an early liberation for those trapped.
September 18
Since August 16, the Republican troops have been digging two tunnels to the southwest tower of the Alcázar. On September 18, the two mines were detonated by Francisco Largo Caballero . The tower collapsed and buried the defenders under itself. About ten minutes later, the republican troops began the attack on the Alcázar with the help of armored vehicles and tanks. However, the attack failed due to the fierce resistance (Moss: 1936: p. 217).
September 19-26
Due to the artillery fire, communication with the buildings outside the Alcázar was no longer possible, which led to the defenders being ordered to retreat on September 21. On September 23 at 5:00 a.m., the Republican troops captured the northern wall of the Alcázar and advanced into the courtyard of the Alcázar. This attack was repulsed by the reserves that were called in. Another attack occurred that morning, but it also failed.
On September 26, nationalist troops reached the village of Bargas, 6.5 kilometers north of Toledo. The position of the Republicans became more and more hopeless and a last attempt was made to capture the Alcázar. The attempt also failed, and a short time later the nationalist troops arrived in Toledo. Republican troops withdrew to Aranjuez, and the remaining Republicans were massacred, including 200 wounded militiamen.
Media staging
Not only journalists, photographers and cameramen from various countries reported on the Spanish civil war, the international significance of the respective media events was often additionally emphasized: “Toledo. This word has a brilliant ring! The whole world picks up when the telegraph and radio use this name, ”wrote a war correspondent for the Völkischer Beobachter in September 1936 .
The siege of the Alcázar of Toledo presented itself as one of the first events that were not only clearly delineated locally, but also offered a clearly recognizable "story" that could be narrative adapted to the expectations of the respective audience.
Toledo and its Alcázar, as lieux de mémoire ( places of remembrance ), offered special potential for narrative modeling ( empowerment ) effective in the media : the fortress has been besieged, destroyed and rebuilt several times since the Middle Ages. The (re) conquest of Toledo during the Reconquista in 1085 was legendary . The Alcázar, built in the 16th century under Charles V , was the center of government of the Spanish Empire before the capital was moved to Madrid , and the Inquisition was also in office in Toledo . Especially in the context of the historical Reconquista, the siege of the fortress in 1936 could be portrayed as a symbolic condensation of the new “religious war” between fascism and communism. The recapture of the Alcázar could be understood as a first step for the “reunification” of Spain under Francoist leadership.
The siege and liberation of the Alcázar retained its outstanding status in the Francoist culture of remembrance beyond its immediate news and propaganda value. Numerous micro-narratives that were rumored by the media during the siege found their way into literary and cinematic implementations of the material, which can also be verified outside of Spain. It was only through these subsequent adaptations that the significance of the event constituted in cultural memory, which through the continued figuration process (cf. Hayden White ) has acquired a legendary character.
Elements of the legend
An important part of the legend is the alleged participation of the Toledo cadets in the fighting. At the time of the uprising, however, the cadets of the military school there had already been taken off for their summer vacation, so that only a handful of them actually took part in the defense of the Alcázar. Although this fact became known relatively early during the siege, it was partially withheld by the media in order to add to the drama of the event.
The real core of the Alcázar legend, however, is an individual sacrifice story, which is based on both Old Testament ( Sacrifice of Isaac ) and Spanish models (Guzmán el Bueno) from cultural memory. The son of the Alcázar commander was captured by the besiegers and used as leverage to force the fortress to surrender. According to legend, the commander Moscardó resisted this extortion attempt in a dramatic telephone conversation with the republican commander of the siege army, which is said to have led to the immediate execution of his son.
Media productions in Spain and Italy
The Italian-Spanish co-production Sin novedad en el Alcázar (director: Augusto Genina , screenplay: Pietro Caporilli ) from 1940 played a central role in anchoring the media event in the national memory of Francoist Spain, but also Italy and Germany. In the opening credits of the Spanish version it says about the function of this production: “This film is intended to recall the sublime heroism of the defenders of the Alcázar (“ el sublime heroísmo de los defensores del Alcázar ”) on the screen.” In addition, all events of this are emphasized The “glorious epic” (“gloriosa epopeya”) and all the people appearing were inspired by testimonies and authentic historical documents (“testimonios y documentos de absoluta autenticidad histórica”). At least it is true that all elements of the legend of the Alcázar are present, but in the film they only claim to be documentary authenticity. Not only the fictional struggle of the cadets is described, but also the dramatic telephone conversation between Moscardó and the besiegers. The dramatic climax and end point of the film is the meeting of Coronel Moscardó and General Franco in the destroyed courtyard of the fortress, where the eponymous words are used: "Sin novedad en el Alcázar" (ie: "Nothing new in the Alcázar"). However, the film also highlights the transnational significance of the media event: towards the end of the siege, fictional front pages of newspapers from all over the world that open up with the Alcázar story (New York Times, Le Journal, BZ am Mittag, Magyarorszag, Il Messaggero) are shown ). In November 1940, in Primer Plano magazine , Genino compared his film with the propaganda effect of Sergej Eisenstein's battleship Potemkin (1927): “'Potemkin' stands for the film about the destructive revolution. El Alcázar stands for the film of the constructive revolution. Apart from that, Sin novedad rises above the violence and the blood of 'Potemkin' through the poetry of faith, through the radiance of its wives and children, through the heroism of its men, through the sacrifice of all those who fell there. " Sin novedad en el Alcázar itself is therefore also clearly transnational in terms of aesthetics: on the one hand - in contrast to Eisenstein - it is supposed to be the ideal fascist revolutionary film, but apparently also - which the title with its allusion to Erich-Maria Remarques Im Westen is nothing new reveals - also the ideal fascist war film.
The siege of the Alcázar was also staged in a way that was tailored to the target group on the radio in French-speaking Spain (Radio Nacional de España). For example, in a children's program (the ondas animadas ), a popular radio announcer (“El tío Fernando”) told the story of the Alcázar in fairy tale form. Here, too, the focus is again on the sacrifice of the son by Moscardó.
Media productions in Germany
The transferability of the Alcázar myth is exemplified by the economic situation that this topic experienced in the media of the 'Third Reich'. In the years after 1936, Toledo not only became a kind of place of pilgrimage for German travelers to Spain - prominent authors from the Third Reich such as EE Dwinger and Will Vesper report in detail about the Alcazár in their travel notes (Dwinger 1937 / Vesper 1942) - but also to a subject in particular of youth literature. The fact that there were a few young cadets - that is, officer students - among the defenders of the Alcázar played a central role in this context. The titles of some of the books published since 1937 already indicate this: for example Erich Dietrich's Toledo War School. The young Spain's heroic struggle from the Alkazar (1937) and Hellmut Boerner's The Cadets of Toledo (1942). But Willibrord Menkes Heldenlied the Alcazar (1937) and Rudolf Timmermanns heroes of the Alcázar. A factual report from Toledo (1937) puts the struggle of the Cadets in the foreground. The struggle of the Spanish cadets in the Alcázar was also used on the radio of the 'Third Reich' to educate young people in national politics. In early 1937 Roland Strunk's radio play Alcazar - The Heroes of Toledo was broadcast in the “Hour of the Young Nation” broadcast throughout the Reich . The author was the foreign correspondent of the Völkischer Beobachter in Spain at the beginning of the civil war and had visited Toledo in October 1936. With the fall of the 'Third Reich', the presence of the Alcázar myth in Germany did not end abruptly. The fact that the former commander of the Alcázar was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 (Weber 1992: 201) shows how smoothly the anti-communist symbolic power of the Alcázar myth could be used during the Cold War. In the same year, the fascist propaganda film Sin novedad en el Alcázar from 1940 came in a new cut in German cinemas.
Media presentations in non-fascist countries
In 1936, 20th Century Fox is said to have announced that it would produce a full-length feature film on the subject of Alcázar. Directed should Henry King lead as the main character Been Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor named. The realization of this project was prevented by the fierce resistance of pro-republican circles in Hollywood. The difficulties in the filming of Ernest Hemingway's novel Whom the Hour Strikes soon showed that although a pro-fascist film could be prevented, an openly pro-republican film project, out of consideration for the foreign policy line of the USA in the thirties, was just as impossible enforced.
literature
- Felipe Cabrerizo: Tiempo de mitos. Las coproducciones cinematográficas entre la España de Franco y la Italia de Mussolini (1939–1943) (= Colección Benjamín Jarnés. 8). Diputación Provincial de Zaragoza, Zaragoza 2008, ISBN 978-84-9703-193-6 .
- Magí Crusells: La Guerra Civil española. Cine y propaganda. Ariel, Barcelona 2000, ISBN 84-344-6626-0 .
- Cecil D. Eby: The Siege of the Alcazar. (Toledo: July to September 1936). Bodley Head, London 1966.
- Gabrielle Ashford Hodges: Franco. A Concise Biography. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2000, ISBN 0-297-64304-5 .
- Judith Keene: Luchando por Franco. Voluntarios Europeos al Servicio de la España Fascista, 1936–1939. Salvat, Barcelona 2002, ISBN 84-345-6893-4 .
- Geoffrey McNeill-Moss (Geoffrey Moss): The Siege of the Alcázar, a History of the Siege of the Toledo Alcazar, 1936. Alfred A. Knopf, New York NY 1937.
- José Augusto Ventín Pereira: La Guerra de la radio, 1936–1939 Miter, Barcelona 1986, ISBN 84-7652-012-3 .
- Günther Schmigalle (Ed.): The Spanish Civil War. Literature and history. Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-921600-49-9 .
- Herbert Rutledge Southworth: El Mito de la cruzada de Franco. Crítica bibliográfica. Ruedo Ibérico, Paris 1963.
- Hugh Thomas : The Spanish Civil War. Revised and updated edition. Modern Library, New York NY 2001, ISBN 0-375-75515-2 .
- Petra-Maria Weber: Spanish Policy on Germany 1945–1958. Disposal of the past (= research on Spain. Vol. 9). Breitenbach, Saarbrücken et al. 1992, ISBN 3-88156-550-7 .