Spanish White Book: The Italian Invasion of Spain

The Battle of Guadalajara was accompanied by a parallel propaganda war. At the front lines, the Italian anti-fascists fighting for the Republic encouraged their countrymen to desert, promising they would be welcomed like brothers. In an improvised, but effective psychological war, they used large loudspeakers and stopped leaflet from airplanes saying “They said you were going to Abyssinia and they sent you to Spain; they said you were going to work and they sent you to the slaughterhouse; they promised you land and gave you death”. The trench newspapers used stereotypes questioning their masculinity to make fun of the Italian soldiers: “si es marica el marrano, italiano”. Some jokes even crossed the lines and spread in the rebel zone. The initials CTV stood for “when are you going?” While the battle raged, the Italian Press Office published the first issue of the Il Legionario newspaper, a contrast to Il Garibaldino, the paper of the Garibaldi Brigade.

The victory gave the Republican government the opportunity to show the world any amount of proof of the massive Fascist contribution to the rebel cause, in violation of the Non-Intervention Agreement. Republican propaganda services produced photographic dossiers of documents found among the belongings of Italian prisoners including identity cards, pay receipts, money orders, and marching instructions given to men serving in both the Militia and the Royal Army. Many of those soldiers had fought in Abyssinia and carried postcards of naked women or photographs of the victims of their violence as souvenirs.

This material was used to produce the Spanish White Book: The Italian Invasion of Spain, which was published in English and French as well as Spanish. Foreign Minister Alvarez del Vayo presented it to the League of Nations in May 1937. The hundred documents reproduced there constituted irrefutable proof that “the Spanish people and its democratically elected government are defending themselves against a foreign, Fascist invasion”. They could be proud of their first victory, the first against international Fascism.

The propaganda war was especially intense on the radio, the means of mass communication of the period. The Republic replied to the broadcasts of National Radio of Salamanca and Union Radio in Seville, notorious for the evening rants of General Queipo de Llano, with Italian-language programs on Radio Barcelona and Radio Milan, located in Pozuela del Rey, near Madrid. It is no coincidence that in 1935-1936 audiences for radio broadcasts in Italy increased to unprecedented sizes, and the efforts of the Italian authorities to block the reception of those stations only laid the foundation for the massive phenomenon of clandestine listening that characterized the years of World War II.

FJMS