Good Invaders? The Occupation Policy of the Spanish Blue Division in Northwestern Russia,1941–1944

Exotic and Undisciplined Occupiers

The Spanish soldiers were already implicated in a series of minor incidents involving the peasantry during their first march on foot from Eastern Poland to the Russian Front (August–September 1941). In response to first complaints from the German liaison officers, Spanish commander-in-chief General Agustín Muñoz-Grandes issued an edict reminding the soldiers that ‘any attack to people, property, or unauthorized requisitions could be considered an infraction of the rights of the people against devastation or looting’ and punishable under Article 233 of the Spanish Military Code. ¹⁵ However, the behaviour of the BD did not alter upon entering Russian territory; in late September, a German unit informed their superiors that a passing ‘division of Spanish soldiers’ had requisitioned livestock and chickens from local peasants in the village of Isifowo. ¹⁶ Spanish troops arrived at the rearguard station in Nowo-Sokolniki – the halfway point in their transfer to Volkhov – between 29 September and 13 October. The local German military police was ineffective in keeping the Spanish soldiers from engaging in looting and intimidation. They destroyed the station searching for firewood, raided the town, looted warehouses, and requisitioned livestock and grains from peasant households. The Spanish officers apologised for the soldiers’ behaviour, saying that their actions corresponded to their hatred for communism. ¹⁷

The arrival of the Spaniards to the Volkhov Front certainly began chaotically; they lodged with the local residents in nearby villages, disrupting the routines the peasant families had become more or less accustomed to under German rule. The BD General Staff ordered that behaviour towards the locals be ‘prudent and proper’, avoiding ‘injustice, coercion and violence, … as well as familiarity, which could be subject to espionage’. ¹⁸ However, Germans soon began receiving complaints from peasants regarding the Iberians’ plundering of food, livestock, and warm clothing. ¹⁹ They also looted ‘exotic souvenirs’, especially Orthodox icons. It is difficult to discern how much of what the soldiers took corresponded to larceny, church requisitions, and other forms of acquisition or bartering, all of which formed a part of the Division’s daily life. ²⁰ In November 1942, a Spanish volunteer described his personal booty: ‘I found a little Russian suitcase, in which I plan to take four books and icons if possible, and I do believe it to be so. It’s not much, and certainly not “pretty” – there was quite the icon hunt around these houses for the first few days – but enough to be a souvenir.’ ²¹

The Germans attributed such behaviour to relaxed discipline, mismanagement by ill-trained Spanish non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who had entered the ranks of the Army during the Spanish Civil War, the indifference of the BD High Command, and, especially, the hierarchical stance of the Division’s quartermaster, who distributed much to the officers and little to the soldiers. ²² This lack of efficiency in the provisioning system had been a feature of the Spanish army since the colonial wars of 1895–8 and 1907–25, and was apparent during the foot march to Russia. By November 1941, the Army Group North was seriously considering replacing the BD quartermaster with an annexed department under German command. ²³ This may have led the discontented Spanish soldiers to provision themselves from the civilian population, as their German comrades had been doing for weeks and months. Violence was not always necessary. Upon arriving at the front, Sergeant Ramón Abadía described how easy it was to obtain food from the villagers, whom he regarded – like many of his comrades in arms – as good savages: ‘with a little chocolate and some sweets we can trick them into giving us milk and potatoes … probably using the same methods as Columbus did when he discovered the Americas and the Indians’. ²⁴

There was not much to requisition. The local food situation in the rearguard of the Volkhov Front was critical since October 1941. Subjected to Wehrmacht demands, the peasants had already sold their livestock and almost everything of value they owned, including coats and boots. It was a poor county to begin with, with very little mechanized agriculture, and only half of the fertile lands could be farmed in that area. In October 1941, many women, children, and elderly began to withdraw to the rearguard from areas close to the front. On 24 October, the Army Group North command drily noted that ‘it seems that sooner or later these people will all die of starvation’. ²⁵

The unruly conduct of the BD towards the peasants had already alarmed the German liaison staff by late October 1941. They had caught wind of the pervasive lack of discipline in the relations between the Spanish volunteers and the civilian population, as well as the indiscriminate and sometimes coercive plundering of food and livestock. The Russian peasants themselves even complained to the Spanish command. ²⁶ The situation peaked with the Spanish soldiers’ ‘lack of control with women’, which generated ‘distasteful scenes’ and the threat of propagating venereal diseases. ²⁷ Adding to the continual requisitions, the ‘rapes and other nuisances to the civilian population’ made the exasperated locals less cooperative in the anti-partisan fight. ²⁸ The BD General Staff recorded few cases against soldiers for ‘dishonest abuse’. ²⁹ However, in December 1941 complaints even reached General Franco and the Spanish Minister of War. Confidential reports described the ‘unsavoury characters in the Division, who rob, murder and burn whatever they wish’, as well as the fact that officers ‘had to watch the troops, to avoid them requisitioning everything they found in the neighbouring villages; as these were frequent, embarrassing cases’. ³⁰ The lack of appropriate equipment for surviving the winter aggravated the situation. When necessary, the Spaniards – and others – took felt boots, hats, and coats from the peasants, leaving them defenceless against the winter cold. ³¹ The delay of the Christmas bonus dispatched from Spain, and its scarcity compared to what was promised, generated additional discontent among the troops in late December 1941. ³²

Aside from their prejudice against the Spanish – which had surfaced among the officers of the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War ³³ – the German command concluded that the structural cause of BD conduct stemmed from the hierarchic culture of the Spanish military. The chief commander of the Army Corps XXXVIII attributed the ‘brutal conduct of the Spanish soldiers’ to the lack of discipline in the BD, pointing out how ‘the best food is unabashedly eaten by the officers as extra rations’. In December 1941, the commander of the 16th Army demanded from Berlin that the divisionarios be relieved of their duties, to keep their lack of discipline from spreading to the German soldiers. ³⁴ Not only were the troublesome soldiers jeopardizing the Wehrmacht’s honour, their anarchic actions could lead the civilian population to overcome their fear of reprisal and support the partisans. Of course, German soldiers also occasionally created disturbances, but these were subject to Wehrmacht discipline. Systematic exploitation and more or less rational plundering was entirely different from uncontrolled requisitions that did not benefit the occupying army collectively. ³⁵

The BD enjoyed the privilege of not being subject to Wehrmacht military justice. This troubled the Germans, as they could not always impose their discipline on their allies. In November 1941, when two Spanish soldiers killed the town elders of Grigorowo and Novgorod, the culprits were only sanctioned by BD command after significant pressure from the Germans. ³⁶ In December 1941, the Army Corps XXXVIII began to fear that incessant BD pillaging would make the peasants unwilling to collaborate in reporting sightings of Soviet incursions. ³⁷ Three months later, the Army Corps Martial Court explicitly indicated that the Blue Division was responsible for all major discipline issues within their jurisdiction and that no significant measures had been taken to address the problem. At that point, the Germans decided to arrest Spaniards caught pillaging or stealing, and to incarcerate them for several days before handing them over to the Spanish military justice. The conduct of the divisionarios even led to relaxed discipline in the German 126th Infantry Division. ³⁸ However, other German divisions that had little or no contact with their Spanish comrades were also involved in aggression and mistreatment of the civilian population.^{39 Spaniards were not necessarily an exception.}

The relief battalions arriving from Spain from March 1942 onwards, in which the proportion of wholehearted Fascists was even less, were no better behaved than their predecessors. Food theft was common during train stops in Polish, Baltic, or Russian territory. In December 1942, General Emilio Esteban-Infantes took command of the BD, which had been reassigned to the southern front of the Leningrad blockade. The troops began to receive better provisions of food and winter clothing, thanks to an increase in supplies from Spain. ⁴⁰ A better quartermaster and German insistence also helped to improve daily relations between the divisionarios and the civilian population.

Coexisting with the Enemy

Generally speaking, the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts were panoramas of hunger and desolation. Some records show that the Spaniards were aware of the terrible living conditions in the besieged city, thanks to the stories of Soviet prisoners. ⁴¹ Misery was the status quo in the rearguard of the occupied area as well. In the village of Vyritsa, for example, the civilian mortality rate increased eleven-fold in April 1942. Captain Serafín Pardo described months later how children and women would fight over the scraps the divisionarios gave them. ⁴² When military surgeon Manuel de Cárdenas passed through the town of Gatchina, he wrote in his war diary of the malnourishment with clinical precision:

There are lots of people on the streets …; old, bearded mujiks, dirty and ragged; shabby old women with faces yellowed from many months of hunger. Pretty young women nonetheless poor and dirty; not as thin as the old women as they can work some and are better suited to finding food thanks to their youth. Barefoot urchins with hats on their heads but so horribly thin their legs look like they belong to skeletons … The hunger among these civilians is honestly frightening. They may not even survive the next winter. I often see men with juvenile features but who look so horribly aged, paled by avitaminosis and their legs swollen from hunger. And these half-men are the lucky ones, they are not in the prisoner camp. ⁴³

The civilians were so underfed that malnutrition weakened their immune systems and aggravated their illnesses. They lacked adequate medical attention. Spanish doctors in the immediate rearguard often helped the civilian population, ⁴⁴ but their good intentions were not always enough. In June 1942, Cárdenas visited a hospital for civilians and Soviet prisoners in Kolmovo, ⁴⁵ and what he saw horrified him: ‘The civilian population … survived this winter and now suffer from the most awful hunger and misery.’ The hospital environment was frighteningly gruesome: ‘It smells so incredibly bad … Each body is more emaciated than the last; their faces, hands and feet look like anatomical illustrations, where even the smallest tendon can be seen.’ ⁴⁶

Despite occasional plundering, since the beginning of 1942 the Spanish soldiers were generally amicable to the civilian population. Orders from BD headquarters required the correct treatment of prisoners and civilians, but also warned of the dangers of excessive fraternization. In May 1943, Esteban-Infantes instructed the Division command to be wary of soldiers or officers living with women or Russian families outside Division protocol, but their responses showed little concern for this issue. ⁴⁷

Yet, for many Russian women, children, and elderly, having an officer in the house with his assistants, or a squadron of soldiers, could be a lifeline for survival, giving them access to extra rations and clothing as well as protection against possible abuse from other soldiers. Generally, two months after their arrival at the front, the Spaniards were more welcome than the Germans, as they tended not to force the elderly to clear roads and let the peasants use their livestock for ploughing when the ground thawed. The Iberians often found in Russian peasant women ‘the family we lacked because it was far away’, while Spanish lodgers were seen as protection against the greater rigours of German occupation. ⁴⁸ However, Spaniards also became aware of the misery their ‘adoptive’ families suffered. Salvador Zanón noted in December 1941 that the hungry family of the isba (farmhouse) where his platoon lived also had to feed them:

Craba lives with her small, dirty, crying son, two very ugly women and two other lads of eight or ten years, who teach us Russian and eat the candy and chocolate we supply. These poor people live a sad, harsh life, but where else can they go? Here at least they have a few potatoes, well hidden so that we do not take them. ⁴⁹

Spanish officers were particularly welcome, as they brought with them better supplies. Vasíly P., a 13-year-old boy at the time, was lucky enough to have a Spanish lieutenant living with him and his mother. The officer put a guard at the door and received additional food supplies. He shared the food with the Russian family, as did many divisionarios. ⁵⁰ Other testimonies support this image. Ochapkina A. Dimitrieva remembered the Spanish soldiers’ good behaviour towards the peasant families taking refuge in the Otenskij monastery: ‘they were more human than the Germans’. ⁵¹ According to the young collaborator Lidia Ósipova, in Pavlovsk the locals’ first impression of the exotic occupiers was ambivalent: ‘These Spaniards destroyed the image we had of their people as proud, noble, beautiful, etc. … They are small and unruly like monkeys; dirty swindlers like gypsies’; but also ‘very kind’. Certainly, the success of the Iberian volunteers was not entirely due to their southern charm; from mid-1942, they often received packages from Spain, which contained products impossible to find in Russia, from chickpeas to liquor. They often distributed their surplus among the local people. Naturally, this endeared them to the civilians, who took to them, ‘as they had never been fond of the Germans’. On 17 September 1942, Lidia recorded that a Spanish captain had risked his life to save a homeless child during a bombardment. A few days later, BD soldiers wept inconsolably at the funeral of a Russian girl hit by a bullet. On the downside, the organizational chaos that reigned in the Iberian rearguard created uncertainty among the civilians as to what was and was not allowed. Unlike the Germans, the Spaniards tended to be unpredictable. ⁵²

However, the requisitions did not end when the BD was transferred to Leningrad’s southern flank. The peasants occasionally reported these events to Spanish officers, and in several cases forceful occupation and ransacking of homes by soldiers led to a council of war. ⁵³ A German lieutenant wrote in September 1942, ‘Whether they are German or Spanish, the soldiers who risk their lives in the vanguard do not ask themselves if the Muschik goes hungry in winter, they simply take the potatoes from the ground.’ The Iberians were particularly unsystematic in pillaging. This caused trouble for the German command as the peasants, protesting the Spanish plundering, also pillaged everything they could find. The German officer wondered if they ‘should hang a couple [of peasants] as an example’. ⁵⁴

The adverse effects of thefts and requisitions on the image of the divisionarios among the Russian peasants were not always compensated for by equivalent acts of kindness by other soldiers and officers. As with other Wehrmacht divisions, experiences varied greatly among units and villages. When Captain De Andrés’s detachment passed through Viriza, they found a group of famished elderly persons and children whose chickens had been stolen by another Spanish unit. To repair this deed, De Andrés sacrificed a horse and distributed it among them. When Captain Serafín Pardo arrived at his new post on the Leningrad Front, he took in a starving Russian family to work as auxiliaries for the soldiers in exchange for ample rations. The son of that family returned to Spain with the divisionarios and became an engineer. ⁵⁵

Ugly Panienkas and Idealized Katiuskas

From the very beginning of the Spanish occupation, plenty of romances occurred between divisionarios and panienkas, the Polish word for girls that the Iberian volunteers also extended to Russian women. Numerous orders were issued from the BD General Staff prohibiting close relationships between Russian civilians and soldiers, which extended to dancing, walking arm in arm with ‘Soviet women’, knocking at their doors, and accepting their invitations. ⁵⁶ The frequent reiteration of these instructions speaks of their ineffectiveness, as does the lack of interest in enforcing them on the part of officers. ⁵⁷ Many a Spanish volunteer maintained virtually platonic relations with young women they could barely communicate with through gestures. Soldier Roberto Rivera described in August 1942 how ‘My dear little friend Tatiana (19 years old) tries to teach me to speak Russian … Until now I have only learned to say jorasó = pretty and lin-blin = I love you.’ ⁵⁸ Spanish soldiers portrayed themselves in the Hoja de Campaña (BD trench journal) as surrounded by doting women who washed their clothes ‘because I give them sweets in exchange’.

Though gallantry with Russian women was more intense on the Leningrad Front than the Volkhov Front, ⁵⁹ matches between the occupying soldiers and Russian women were plausible in the shared living conditions that prevailed on both areas. It was not limited to the Spanish either; even the supposedly cold Germans fancied Russian women. The sexual relations between the occupiers and Slavic women were far more commonplace than either side cared to acknowledge. ⁶⁰ However, Spanish soldiers’ romances with Russian women sometimes ended up in unauthorized weddings, and by mid-1942 the situation was scandalizing a Wehrmacht High Command that was only willing to recognize marriages with Baltic women. The BD command decided not to officially validate any matrimoniies between divisionarios and Russian women, forbidding that they be taken to Spain when the soldiers returned. ⁶¹ However, some of these marriages served to hide a different type of relationship. For example, Colonel Robles Pazos ordered his Russian lover to marry one of the Division’s Russian interpreters so he could bring her back to Spain. ⁶²

Though some marriages occurred, very few sincere relationships emerged out of these circumstances. For a start, the Russian women encountered were quite removed from the feminine ideal held by the Iberians, especially those from urban, middle-class backgrounds. Even when they could find Russian women with urban habits, such as in Minsk, their feelings were fairly similar. Private Ramírez Morales described it as ‘looking through an old photo album from the 1920s’. ⁶³ Letters and diaries portrayed Russian country girls as females lacking graces, dirty and unkempt, aged by work, hunger and misery, dressed in rags and not always given to respecting traditional morals. A far cry from the feminine ideal cherished by Spanish men, especially those from the urban middle class. ⁶⁴ Private Martínez Tessier noted the want of delicacy of form, distinction of dress, and silk stockings in the first Russian peasant girls he saw: ‘The women have no femininity. … Their manners are also manly.’ ⁶⁵ Another volunteer of middle-class background wrote that ‘the woman, in Russia … lacks the most exquisite sense: femininity. She is a bear that works the fields.’ ⁶⁶

The distance between Russian peasant women and the aesthetic ideals for Spanish women – or European urban middle-class women in general – was not only a consequence of war privation and German occupation. ⁶⁷ It was understood as one more example of Soviet barbarism, a male monster that had supposedly stripped women of all feminine and moral content in order to facilitate the destruction of traditional family ties. Their lack of hygiene also fit with the dirtiness of the Russian context. Lieutenant Arenales noted how only female teachers were worthy of interest, ‘since they seem to wash, which is uncommon’. The pseudo-oriental physical features he thought he saw in them were also considered less attractive: ‘small, slanted eyes that seem sunken due to exaggerated cheekbones’. ⁶⁸

Not everything qualified as the naïve love or idealized respect for peasants that was later published in the memoirs of Spanish veterans. ⁶⁹ Often, the objective was mere sexual entertainment with peasant women, who were seen as primitives who might lack morals and welcome promiscuity. In October 1941, several Spanish soldiers entered a house in Podberesje, looking for a sergeant and a corporal who were missing from their unit. There they witnessed how their comrades made love to (or raped?) some Russian women with oriental features in a dirty, promiscuous environment, according to the war diary of one of them:

There were two rooms … and they smelled disgusting, in one were the ‘fathers’ and the ‘children’ of the femmes fatales, not at all concerned with the shrieks or with what their daughters or sisters were doing … and in the other, unbelievably, none other than the sergeant and the corporal, talking little and doing much, with two Spaniards and two Germans sitting there drinking and singing and ‘admiring’ the Russian beauties. You should have seen them! And especially – what a fright – two of them were short, stout, with slanted eyes, mongoloid lips and repugnant arms … one was missing half a nose and half of her face was burned, and the other kept farting so much that it turned my stomach … ⁷⁰

The ironic farewell letter of a contributor to the Hoja de Campaña in March of 1944 demonstrated a tone quite removed from Don Juan gallantry. He suggested that his panienka should continue to cultivate the barley and alfalfa; he begged her too to remain true to ‘himself, Perez, Sergeant Gomez and Corporal Ortiz’. ⁷¹ Blatant prostitution also occurred. One teacher from Samokrasa, finding she could no longer impart lessons, earned a living for herself and the children by ‘selling herself as a prostitute to the Spaniards who occupied the school complex’. ⁷² Some diaries suggest that other panienkas offered their charms in exchange for food, and relationships could also blossom from such encounters. Near Sitno in early December, one logistics soldier visited ‘some panienkas that I was told were quite nice looking. They laughed and “we had fun”.’ He visited one of them several more days. When his unit was forced to withdraw, she asked in vain that he take her with him. ⁷³

Corporal Antonio Herrero wrote in April 1943 that after attending the Catholic mass, the soldiers in his company attended a ‘magnificent banquet followed by a fun dance with the local girls’. Evening parties were common in spring and summer, often in front of an Orthodox church that had been reopened by the occupying forces. ⁷⁴ However, some testimonies suggest that many of these fetes were organized by the German Kommandaturen, which recruited local women with food. One Russian interpreter indicated in letters to Spain that his main duties involved travelling in the rearguard seeking girls for the officers’ parties. ⁷⁵ Relations with Russian women implied a mix of seduction and distrust, gallantry and fear: they might be collaborating as decoys for a partisan ambush at the party. ⁷⁶ Additionally, the daily disputes between German and Spanish soldiers often revolved around food, the black market, or women. Many German soldiers and Germanic Waffen SS volunteers, disregarded the racial dictum prohibiting sexual relations with female Soviet civilians. Antonina Davychenko (born 1932) wrote of a fistfight that occurred when Spanish soldiers protected a Russian woman from the harassments of German soldiers. Lidia Osípova indicated that when the Iberians arrived in Pavlovsk, ‘all the loose women who were with the Germans immediately went to be with the Spaniards’, attracted by their gregarious Latin nature and their better food rations. Russian women also regarded them as better lovers. ⁷⁷

Children constituted a very different chapter in the narrative, as creatures whose innocence could easily symbolize and reinforce the re-Christianizing mission Spaniards attributed to themselves. ⁷⁸ Many volunteers saw themselves as protectors of children, and gave them treats and food. Many were taught to pray or speak a few words in Spanish. ⁷⁹ Compassion for the children in their misery showed up in testimonies. Martín Velasco wrote of the hunger in Vitebsk:

Four Russian children near me are holding in their little hands a greasy paper with lamb bones from our mess, which the cooks gave them. It is pitiful and sad to see how these children peel bones with almost no meat on them and look at me with small sad eyes, saying gout [sic], which in German means ‘good’. ⁸⁰

Many Spanish veterans described having nourished and protected little children – virtually adopting them – as their best memory of Russia. The later accounts of elderly peasants from the Novgorod area corroborate this. Unlike the Germans, Spanish soldiers were often surrounded by children. ⁸¹ Many of these malenkis were war orphans who sometimes formed bands that wandered about the rearguard searching for food or shelter, begging or engaging in petty theft. ⁸² A Falangist veteran described his best memory from the Russian Front: ‘Lyda Kakuska Sylgueida, 12 years old, blonde as a peach. Her face was rosy, she was a thin, angelical little creature. … She ate with us, displaying extreme tenderness and delicacy … Sad smile. She never spoke of her parents.’ BD troops frequently supported orphans or the children of widows; occasionally, sexual favours from the mothers were implicitly acknowledged as the price for such altruistic protection. ⁸³ In spite of the Franco regime’s zeal to avoid infiltration by Soviet spies, several documented cases tell of Russian children and adolescents hiding in wagons or dressing as divisionarios and being taken to Spain by Spanish soldiers and officers, who then incorporated them into their families. ⁸⁴ This also constituted a clear difference from the attitudes of German soldiers.

Dealing with Partisans: Benevolence or Inefficacy?

Anti-guerrilla operations and the treatment of captured Soviet partisans are among the thorniest issues in the post-1945 narratives of Spanish veterans. Problematic from the moment the Blue Division entered Soviet territory in September 1941, partisans were responsible for a significant number of Spanish casualties. However, war veterans’ memoirs generally recalled that burnt Russian villages and hanged peasants were always the work of the German allies. ⁸⁵ To avoid poisoning by the enemy, the BD command instructed in October 1941 that it was best to have peasants or Russian prisoners drink up to 1.5 litres of water before it was declared potable. During the march through occupied territories, members of the first expedition witnessed German reprisals against partisans or suspects. In their diaries, several Iberian soldiers wrote of seeing partisans – and civilians accused of collaborating with them – being shot. ⁸⁶ They also saw partisans hung in town squares as a warning to the civilian population. Some equated partisans with Jews, based on a characteristic slogan of Wehrmacht propaganda. ⁸⁷

These scenes multiplied proportionally when Spanish volunteers reached the Volkhov Front in October 1941 and during the subsequent offensive. Víctor J. Jiménez described in 1943 how his literary alter-ego, an artillery officer, was ordered by the Germans to execute two partisan commanders the very day he arrived at the front line. ⁸⁸ The Information Section of the Blue Division interrogated dozens of prisoners to identify political commissars and possible partisans. They were then sent to the German Army Corps Headquarters and most likely shot. ⁸⁹

The divisionarios perceived partisan danger as a diffuse, omnipresent threat: like ‘ghosts’ who populated the dense forests, which ‘were infested with Russians. Bands of them fight with the support of the civilian population. We hear news of betrayals, ambushes, and then reprisals. It is common to see someone from the towns on the banks of the Volkhov hanging from a beam or telephone post.’ ⁹⁰ By early 1942 nearly 20,000 Soviet partisans operated in the rearguard of the Army Group North and were particularly abundant in the Novgorod region. However, the level of partisan activity was moderate, at least compared to White Russia or Ukraine. ⁹¹ The command of the Army Group North rearguard took less aggressive measures to combat partisans and used propaganda to encourage peasant cooperation or the surrender of guerrilla members. Reprisals and firing squads intensified after mid-1942, ⁹² and the bulk of partisan activity occurred in the far rearguard, the rückwartiges Heeresgebiet, where no Spanish soldiers were deployed. Other foreign units, such as the Hungarians in the rear of the Army Group Centre, were systematically deployed to combat partisans. These units frequently employed a high level of violence, stimulated by fear and the brutalization of their fighting environment. Spaniards, in contrast, were never called upon by the German Command to carry out this kind of task. ⁹³

In October 1941, instructions from the BD High Command broadly recommended that if ‘any individuals of the opposing army, in isolation or in groups’, were caught ‘carrying out acts of sabotage such as blowing up bridges, assaulting vehicles or lodgings, or carrying out guerrilla warfare dressed as civilians’, the officers in charge were authorized to do ‘whatever needs to be done with these individuals, depending on the tactical situation’. Eleven days later, a new instruction indicated that in light of the increasing intensity of guerrilla activity, sector chiefs and officers who caught partisans should assume guilt and not seek conclusive evidence, which might have been destroyed ‘with the possible complicity of the locals’. Officers must not be ‘lenient with the resulting threat to the security of the area entrusted to us’. Suspicious individuals should be handed over to the closest German command and ‘snipers’ should be hanged in a public place after interrogation and remain visible for several days as a warning. ⁹⁴ These guidelines were softened in mid-1942, instructing that partisans who surrendered be given the same treatment as Red Army deserters. In theory, Spaniards were to hand over all punishable cases and summary procedures against prisoners of war were to be carried out by the closest German military authorities. The few testimonies that mention retaliatory operations indicate that locals were always handed over to the Germans, who also carried out massive reprisals in towns where sentries had been murdered. There is evidence that Iberian soldiers handed over escaped prisoners to the competent authorities in the 16th and 18th Armies. ⁹⁵

In early 1942, the German command decided to relieve the Blue Division of all sentry duties in the near rearguard, partly because the Spaniards had to cover a very broad section of the front. ⁹⁶ Where they were responsible for these duties, evidence suggests that control of the civil population was less brutal and thorough than with the Germans and the ‘security divisions’ and ‘protection teams’ (Sicherungsdivisionen and Schutzmannschaften) that operated in the rear. The Iberians maintained practices reminiscent of those used in the former colonial wars, rather than the brutalized and radical ‘totalitarian counter-insurgence’ methods of the Wehrmacht. ⁹⁷ Spanish efficacy in the anti-partisan fight was also dubious: their evacuations of the civil population from towns were often chaotic, without ‘any military supervision whatsoever’ and without the authorization of the Division High Command. This might facilitate Soviet espionage and favour the partisans. In July 1943, cases of Spanish soldiers losing their documentation and weapons to Russian civilians prompted the command of Army Corps L to recommend that the Spaniards exercise stricter control over the population. ⁹⁸

In May 1943, increased partisan activity led the XXXVIII Army Corps command to involve the divisions on the front in the persecution of partisans operating in their respective rearguards. Thus, the Spaniards were required to work with detachments of auxiliary Russian and Baltic troops. Some testimonies corroborate that the BD command had given orders to their units to execute any captured partisans on site. In October, instructions from Army Corps L indicated reprisals against local civilians were to be carried out wherever Wehrmacht soldiers had been attacked. However, Spanish efficacy in controlling partisans and civilians acting as informants did not improve. On 18 July 1943, the Blue Division headquarters in Pokrovskaia suffered a precise Soviet artillery attack due to information provided by spies infiltrated among Russian assistants to the BD. ⁹⁹ Four months later, the German command learned of the presence of a group of partisans to the south of Nikolawja and requested the assistance of 200 Spanish soldiers in ‘cleansing’ the area. However, the operation failed for lack of efficiency among the Spaniards. German officers blamed the botched operation on their allies’ repeated indiscretions with their Russian aides, who then passed on the information to partisans. ¹⁰⁰

Few BD internal reports mention explicit anti-partisan actions or their results, but the exceptions show that they did occur. ¹⁰¹ Spanish testimonies tend not to clarify who shot the partisans and provide few details regarding reprisals. Several BD deserters interrogated by the Red Army by the end of 1942 admitted hearing stories of reprisals against partisans from their German comrades, but said they had never actually seen any. ¹⁰² Other testimonies allude to German soldiers and medics ‘finishing off’ injured partisans or regular soldiers, as well as prisoners. However, the Germans did not act alone: some divisionarios stated that they were ordered to execute those who had been arrested and summarily tried. ¹⁰³ Captain De Andrés recalled with disgust his interrogations of several civilians over the suspected disappearance of one of his men: ‘for the first time, I acted as a German oppressor’. Yet, several testimonies alleged that the partisans ‘respected’ the Spaniards more than they did the Germans. ¹⁰⁴

The perspective of the Russian civilians suggests something similar. Spanish soldiers occasionally carried out reprisals against civilians when blinded by a desire to avenge the death of a comrade. Lidia Nikolaévna was 11 when her village of Rogavka, located in the rearguard, became the residence of several detachments of Spanish soldiers resting from combat in early December 1941. Partisan activity immediately increased, involving several Spanish victims. ¹⁰⁵ The Russian girl witnessed how the Spaniards rounded up all the inhabitants from the town and surrounding area to take revenge and hang a partisan fighter. In this case, the local German commander impeded greater reprisals, as the Wehrmacht needed the civilians for labour. The BD rearguard was no blissful Arcadia. ¹⁰⁶