Siege of Madrid - Infighting, Fall of Madrid (1938-March 1939)

Infighting, Fall of Madrid (1938-March 1939)

In 1938, the siege of Madrid tightened and its population suffered increasingly from a lack of food, warm clothes and arms and ammunition. However Franco by this point had given up on the idea of another frontal assault on the city and instead was happy to gradually constrict the siege, while keeping up a bombardment of the city.

By the spring of 1939, after the collapse of the Republican forces on other fronts, it was clear that the Republican cause in Madrid was doomed. This created a bitter division within Republican ranks. On one side was the prime minister Juan Negrín, some other government ministers and the Communist Party, who wanted to fight to the end. They were opposed by the Republican Colonel Segismundo Casado and others, who wanted to negotiate the surrender of Madrid to spare Republican supporters the worst of the Nationalist retribution. On 5 March, Casado's men arrested communist officers in Madrid, stripped them of their powers, and deposed Negrin, establishing a military Junta, the Council of National Defense (Consejo Nacional de Defensa) in order to negotiate a deal peace with Franco. On the 6th, the Communist leaders and the socialist Prime Minister Negrin fled Spain from Elda, nevertheless the communist troops settled around Madrid rejected the authority of the Council and entered in Madrid on the 7th. There were some days of fighting in the streets between communist and non-communist troops, ending with the defeat of the communists and the execution of their leader Luis Barceló.

This left Casado free to try to negotiate surrender terms with Franco. However, the Nationalist leader insisted that unconditional surrender was all that he would accept. On 26 March, Franco ordered a general advance into Madrid and on the 27th, the Republican front collapsed - many of their troops surrendered or simply threw away their weapons and started for home. On 28 March 1939, Madrid finally fell to Franco's forces. In spite of Casado's efforts at negotiation, many of the Republican defenders of Madrid were among the up to 200,000 people who were executed or died during imprisonment by Franco's regime between 1939 and 1943.