Battle of the Ebro

The Battle of the Ebro (Batalla del Ebro in Spanish), fought between July 24 and November 26, 1938, was the last great Republican offensive in the Spanish Civil War.

Earlier that year, the Nationalist forces have overrun Aragon, reached the Mediterranean shore at Vinaròs on April 15, spread along some 40 miles of seashore and cut the Republican-held territory into two. The Ebro River became the boundary between the newly-captured Nationalist territory to its south and the remaining Republican Catalonia to its north.

The decision of Republican PM Negrin to launch a counter-offensive was motivated not only by military considerations, but also by trying to gather international support and prove that the Republic was still an effective fighting force. At the time, US President Frnaklin Roosevelt expressed some sympathy for the Republic, and – while the British political echelon was quite cold – an element in the Admiralty felt it was a mistake to let a Spanish regime allied to Germany and Italy become established in the close vicinity of the strategic Gibraltar.

The Republican offensive across the Ebro caught Franco by surprise, since he expected the Republicans to stay on the defensive and protect their remaining territory, and Republican forces initially made headway and aroused considerable enthusiasm among their supporters. However, the far superior material resources of the Nationalists soon told – most especially the complete aerial superiority of the Nationalists and their German and Italian allies, who had some 500 fighter planes to the mere 100 Republican ones. The Republican advance was halted and bogged down in WWI-style trench warfare, a kind of attrition the Republican Army could hardly afford.

The Munich Agreement, announced while the fighting was going on, was the death blow to any hope of international support fro the Republic. Obviously, with the British and French willing to abandon Czechoslovakia – with whom they had a formal alliance and whose government was in complete control of its national territory – there was no hope of their supporting a Republican Spanish government to whom they had no obligation and in control of only fragments of Spain.

The fighting dragged on until the end of October when the Nationalists counter-attacked and threw the Republicans back across the Ebro. Soon afterwards they crossed the river themselves and conquered Catalunia and its capital Baracelona. The fall of Madrid and Valencia and the end of the Republic followed. In the recriminations of Republican exiles, Negrin was accused of having squandered the Republic's meager remaining resources on a foredoomed offensive, when keeping on the defensive might have bought some more time – perhaps even until the outbreak of general war in Spetember 1939. Historians such as Antony Beevor tend to a similar opinion.

Battle of the Ebro in The War That Came Early
In September 1938 Chaim Weinberg and his fellow soldiers of the Lincoln Brigade were involved in the what seemed yet another day of the halted offensive in the deadlocked Battle of the Ebro, when they got the news of the collapse of the Munich Summit. They were hopeful that the outbreak of the general European war might bring about somer change in their own situation.

Soon thereafter, indeed, the Republic got a flood of new weapons and supplies from France, and most importantly - fighter airplanes which helped overturn the Nationalist-German aerial superiority. At the same time, the British Royal Navy started imposing a blockade and preventing the arrival of supplies to the Nationalists from Germany and Italy.

The resurgent Republican forces were able to achieve a breakthrough, resume their offensive far beyond the Ebro and recover much of the territory lost earlier in the year. An armoured column reached Vinaròs and triumphantly reunited the divided Republican territory.

The Nationalists and Italians tried to stage a counter-offensive (in which Joaquin Delgadillo participated) and capture the key Vinaròs again, – but unlike in April, they were repulsed with great losses and the integrity of Republican territory was preserved.

For a time, Republicans and their allies in the International Brigades entertained the hope of carrying the momentum through to a complete defeat of the Nationalists. However, the French soon lost interest in Spain - needing all their resources for the defense of their own territory, perilously invaded by Germany. The war in Spain settled again into static trench warfare, though on terms vastly better for Republic than before the Ebro offensive was launched. Negrin's bold policy had been clearly vindicated by the way things turned out. .

Literary Comment
This timeline already diverged from ours in 1938, with Sanjurjo surviving to lead the Nationalist rather than Franco. However, the book makes clear that until September 1938 this made little difference to the conduct of the war, and that Sanjurjo made much the same political and military decisions which Frnaco would have made. Specifically, both the Nationalist offensive reaching the sea in April and the Republican counter-offensive across the Ebro in July are seen as having taken place in virtually the same way as in OTL, despite the difference in the Nationalist supreme command.

The conduct of Sanjurjo clearly diverges from Franco's only later on, in early 1939, when Sanjurjo embarks on the conquest of Gibraltar and thus makes Britain into Nationalist Spain's staunch foe. In OTL, Franco avoided any step against Gibralter even when repeatedly urged to it by Germany, kept Nationalist Spain neutral in the larger war and retained his open channels to the British – which ensured his survival in the post-war world.