Civil War
In the spring of 1936, Mola joined a group of army officers led by José Sanjurjo who desired to oust the Popular Front government. Mola's energy and organizational ability soon made him the group's chief planner, while Sanjurjo remained a figurehead. Mola, whose codename was director, sent secret instructions to the various military units to be involved in the uprising. After several delays, July 18, 1936 was chosen as the date of the coup. Francisco Franco's participation was not confirmed until early July. Although events ran ahead of schedule in the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco, Mola waited until July 19 to proclaim the revolt. When Mola's brother was captured by the Republicans in Barcelona, the government threatened his life. Mola replied: "No, he knows how to die as an officer. I can neither take back my word to my followers and probably you cannot either from yours." Mola then ordered systematic executions in captured cities for the purpose of instilling fear. He famously declared: " we must extend the terror; we must impose the impression of dominion while eliminating without scruples everyone who does not think as we do (eliminando sin escrupulos a todos los que no piensen como nosotros ).
The Nationalist coup failed to gain control of either Madrid or other urban areas, though most of the army supported it. As the situation devolved into civil war, Sanjurjo was killed in an air crash on July 20. Mola then became Nationalist commander in the north, while Franco became commander in the south. On September 5, a Nationalist offensive sent by General Mola under Colonel Alfonso Beorlegui took Irún and closed the French border. Mola's forces went on to secure the whole of the province of Guipúzcoa, isolating the remaining Republican provinces in the north.
A junta in Burgos proved unable to set overall strategy thus Franco was chosen commander-in-chief at a meeting of ranking generals on September 21. Mola continued to command the Army of the North and led an unsuccessful effort to take Madrid in October. In a radio address, he described Nationalist sympathizers in the city as a "fifth column" that supplemented his four military columns. The Republican government then proceeded the commit the mass execution of as many as 4,000 suspected civilian and military supporters of the Nationalists. What was later known as the Paracuellos massacre crushed any potential fifth column. The massacre was unknown to the world until four months later as Republican aircraft shot down the plane the International Red Cross envoy delivering the news to the League of Nations.
Read more about this topic: Emilio Mola
Famous quotes related to civil war:
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)