ABSTRACT
In the early days of the war there was some indiscriminate shooting of enemies and potential enemies on both sides, as well as the settling of private scores [126]. Class differences were a continuing provocation, with working-class trade unionists suspected by one side, and the tie-wearing members of the bourgeoisie by the other. In this respect the very openness of Republican Spain was a disadvantage. Accounts were published abroad, relayed by consuls and others, of Popular Front atrocities or of the pillage of churches which tended only to confirm already existing prejudices about the disorderly state of Spain since the February elections. On the insurgent side, their military control and their ostentatious commitment to the ideal of a Christian Spain successfully masked the extent of their bloodily repressive measures. When the foreign press published some particularly discreditable story such as Jay Allen’s dispatch describing the Badajoz massacres by Colonel Yagüe, the Nationalists were ready with some alternative account. The differences between the two sides lay not only in the extent and duration of their terror but also in the attitude of the authorities concerned. The Nationalist terror lasted throughout the war (and after) while terror in the Republican areas was at its height in the early days of the war and then declined rapidly with the reassertion of Republican legality. Again, on the Nationalist side terror and unrestricted cruelty was a matter of policy, approved and supported by the Nationalist command, while on the Republican side such tactics were officially deplored and increasingly curbed – at least until the fall of Largo Caballero, when the newly formed secret police, the SIM* and the growing war psychosis made repression more common.
