MILITARY LESSONS OF THE SPANISH WAR
By Dr. H. ROSINSKI THE intensity of political passion roused by the Spanish Civil War has thrust the extraordinary interest of its military lessons unduly into the background. Well docu- mented and detailed appreciations of the various weapons employed have indeed appeared here and there. But remarkably few attempts have as yet been made to point out their wider bearing upon modern war in general and in particular upon the problem .that has dominated all military thought ever since the World War : that is, the stalemate arising out of the superior defensive power of modern firearms.
The overwhelming superiority of modern defence and the incapacity, of infantry to face the fire of modern armament in the open was the great surprise of the World War. It was this tactical deadlock that, in conjunction with the strategical factor of mass armies, was responsible for the stalemate in -which for four years on the Western Front both sides in turn exhausted their forces in local successes— bought at a cost in life and material out of proportion to the objectives gained—and failed to achieve that decisive break-through that was to enable them to win a final victory in the field. Not even in the end, when the German army, its last strength spent in the vain attempts of the spring and summer of 1918, considerably inferior in numbers and material, bodily and mentally worn out and disintegrated by defection, was forced back step by step, did the front break ; for it was internal disruption which forced the surrender ; and it remained more than doubtful whether even the same limited results could be repeated against an unshaken enemy of equal material and moral strength.
The impression resulting from this " impasse '? has ever since dominated all preparation against a future war, and military opinion finds itself divided between several methods of coping, with it. On the one extreme there are those who would deny to armies all possibility of recovering the power to overcome this stalemate, and therefore would seek to decide the struggle by the employment of a different arm in a different sphere altogether. Thus in Italy General Douhet, taking his stand upon the assumption. that land warfare would speedily. result in a -similar deadlock, evolved his famous doctrine_ of the " independent air force," which, overcoming vertically the defence that had proved -impene- trable horizontally, would enable him to strike directly at the enemy's heart and, having first destroyed his power, to compel his submission by the ruthless bombing of his aero- dromes, factories, capital and other principal settlements ; a concept that, owing to its spectacular properties, has been mainly influential in moulding the general conception of future warfare.
The great majority of soldiers, however, not unnaturally have been reluctant to accept as final this apparent inability of the armies to bring about a decision in the field. While trying to adapt the equipment and training of the infantry as far as possible to new conditions they have turned for the decision to the instrument that in the World War contributed most to the final success, the tank. Thus today in all great military Powers we find the tank entrusted with the task of the decisive break-through, either (as in the World War) in strict connexion with the advancing infantry, or else (because the increasing speed of tanks makes this more and more difficult) acting independently and leaving the infantry to follow in its wake. The increase in the speed of the tank, and the extraordinary technical mobility imparted to modem armies by the large-scale adoption of mechanised and motor- ised units, has in recent years gradually given rise to the hope of regaining strategical mobility by preventing the tactical deadlock altogether. Strong forces of light and highly mobile tanks, followed by motorised divisions, would break through gaps in the enemy's advance or, better still, catch him in his comparatively unguarded flank, before he could settle down upon a stable and continuous front.
Now the outstanding lesson of the Spanish Civil War— as far as the peculiar conditions obtaining in it will allow of a generalisation of its experiences at all—is twofold. On the one hand, none of the three ways of reaching a decision has proved itself effective, and the superiority of the defence has been more pronounced than ever. On the other hand, however, the infantry itself, adequately assisted by other arms, seems to have regained to some extent the capacity for over- coming the tactical deadlock and wresting a decisive victory even from an intrinsically superior defence.
The fact that a stalemate has once more established itself with the meeting of the main bodies is the more remarkable as the small forces available on both sides at first, in conjunction with the immense size of the theatre of war and its many excellent roads, presented nearly ideal conditions for the development of a war of movement. Whether markedly stronger tank forces than were available on either side would have been able to achieve a different result must remain in doubt in view of the general disappointment with the performances of the tank. It has been more or less proved that as an instrument of infantry attack the tank has been overrated. In the battle between the tank and anti-tank- defence, the defence has proved itself at least equal and frequently superior ; the lighter types of guns both in tank and anti-aircraft defence showing themselves markedly superior to the heavier types. It is true that neither the heavier types of tanks nor above all independent mass attacks, as in recent Russian and German manoeuvres, have been tried out as yet in Spain ; but neither has the anti-tank defence been developed to its full capacity and, on general lines, the possibilities for future development would seem definitely greater for the defence than for the tank itself.
But over against this seeming inadequacy of the tank must be placed the success of the two campaigns against Bilbao and Santander in which the nationalist forces achieved a decisive action ending • in the complete overthrow of the enemy's forces and the capture of the objective aimed at. This most remarkable result has not been due to the over- whelming superiority of a single arm, but rather to the skilful co-operation of three main factors : a well-trained, manoeuvring infantry, a remarkably strong concentration of medium and heavy artillery, and the overwhelming moral effect of aircraft employed in machine-gunning and bombing the enemy's trenches from above. This decisive effect of the attack from the air is not only the great surprise of the Spanish Civil War, but actually the one outstanding new tactical factor, definitely favouring the attack against the defence, that has been developed since the World War. Apart from this the lessons of the Spanish Civil War as regards the properties and use of aircraft have to be taken with particular caution in view of the large number of superannuated types on both sides, the lack of any considerable organised air-force on either side in the beginning, and the fact that the surprising results achieved - by co-operation with the other arms have naturally induced both sides to concentrate the limited number of aircraft at their disposal on this purpose. Nevertheless, on general lines, Douhet's extreme theory of winning the war in the air by bombing the enemy into submission seems to have met with a definite setback, for although the surprisingly efficient but, unhappily, very limited anti-aircraft defence available has not been able to prevent air raids from reaching their objectives, aerial bombardments seem to have served to stiffen rather than to break the morale of the civilian population.
If, therefore, the revival of the striking power of the infantry may be considered the outstanding experience of the war in Spain, the mobility conferred by it, and the type of operation arising out of it, differ considerably from the forms of classical warfare. Instead of the " Napoleonic " battle, in which at a certain critical moment the decision was brought about by a sudden stroke of force, and there- after success had merely to be exploited by relentless pursuit, the Bilbao campaign is characterised rather by a continuous chain of skilfully linked-up actions, making use in turn of the advantages of attack and of defence, none of which singly could be claimed to have brought about the decision, yet all together ending in a decisive result ; a type of operation that seems to stand midway between the classical type of battle and the long-drawn battles of attrition of the World War.
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