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NATIONALISTS�
ARAGON OFFENSIVE
by Peter Ayers Wimbrow, III
��� This week, 70 years ago, Nationalist forces were just successfully completing what came to be called �The Aragon Offensive,� which drove to the Mediterranean and split Republican Spain in two.
��� The Battle of Teruel had ended on February 22, with another Republican defeat.� It had begun on December 15, 1937, with a Republican offensive aimed at capturing the provincial capital of Teruel, in Aragon. After a 3-week siege, the sleepy provincial capital fell to the Republican forces and then they became the besieged, with the Nationalists recapturing it on February 22nd, 1938.� The Nationalists suffered 57,000 casualties and the Republicans, 85,000. Republican forces were exhausted and in disarray.� Republican leaders never believed that within two weeks, the Nationalists would launch a massive offensive designed to split Republican Spain in two.
��� Laurie Lee, a British novelist and poet, who served in the International Brigade, said that, �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.��
��� For the new offensive, the Nationalists assembled a force of 150,000, known as the Army of Manoeuver, commanded by Fidel D�vila Arrondo. General D�vila had only recently been named Minister of National Defense and promoted to Lt. General.
��� �The attacking force was divided into seven corps. They included the Moroccans commanded by Juan Yag�e, the Spanish officer most respected by the Germans; the Galicians commanded by General Antonio Aranda Mata, hero of the siege of Oviedo; Carlists from Navarre commanded by General Jos� Solchaga Zala, and an Italian corps commanded by General Mario Berti.� The other three corps from Castile and Arag�n� were commanded by General Jos� Moscard� Ituarte - hero of the defense of the Alc�zar - General Garcia Esc�mez, and General Rafael Garc�a Vali�o.�
��� This force was supported by 700 guns, the Legion Kondor, with its German planes and 200 tanks, commanded by Colonel Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, Italian planes of the Aviazione Legionaria, and the Spanish Brigada Aerea Hispana.� This is where the world first saw the screaming Stuka dive-bomber in action. With the Nationalists and their German and Italian allies controlling the skies, the Republican retreat would become a route.
��� At 6:30 A.M. on March 7, 1938, after an intense artillery and aerial bombardment, the Nationalists attacked between the Ebro River and the Vivel del R�o.� General Solchaga�s corps captured Belchite, which the Republicans had captured the previous year at such terrible cost, on March 10th, driving out the 15th International Brigade.� During the retreat, American Major Robert Merrimann was killed. The former college football player, turned economics professor, turned idealistic soldier, was the model for Robert Jordan in Hemingway�s masterpiece, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which character was portrayed by Gary Cooper, in the movie.
��� On March 16, Nationalist divisions commanded by Mu�oz Grandes (who would command the Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front in the coming War between the Axis and the U.S.S.R.), Bautista S�nchez, and Fernando Barr�n y Ortiz surrounded Caspe, capturing it the next day.
��� After eight days, the Nationalists had advanced 70 miles.� On March 25th, General Yag�e�s Moroccan Corps entered Catalonia, capturing L�rida on April 3rd, along with 40 Americans from the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, 141 British soldiers from the British Battalion, and 21 Canadians from the Mackenzie-Papeneau (�Mac-Pap�) Battalion. By now, the �Lincolns� were led by Captain Milton Wolff, who had just succeeded Steve Reiss, as the ninth, and last, commander of the merged Lincoln-Washington Battalion.� He was described by Hemingway as �...twenty-three years old, tall as Lincoln, gaunt as Lincoln, and as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions in Gettysburg.� He is alive and un-hit by the same hazard that leaves one tall palm tree standing where a hurricane has passed.�� Known during the Spanish Civil War as �El Lobo,� Captain Wolff died at age 92, on January 14, 2008.� He was the author of 3 autobiographical novels - A Member of the Working Class, Another Hill, and The Premature Antifascist.
��� Gandesa fell to General Berti�s Italians on April 6.� On April the 8th, the hydroelectric plants in the Pyrenees, which supplied Barcelona with its electricity, were captured by the Arag�n and Navarre Corps.� Barcelona was forced to resort to its old steam plant.�
��� On April 15, the 4th Navarrese Division, commanded by General Camilo Alonso Vega, captured the fishing town of Vinaroz and by April 19th, the Nationalists had captured 40 miles of the Mediterranean coastline and divided what remained of Republican Spain in two. According to the Nationalists, �...the victorious sword of Franco had cut in two the Spain occupied by the Reds.�
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Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.
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