Battle of Teruel

The Battle of Teruel was fought in and around the city of Teruel during the Spanish Civil War between December 1937 and February 1938, during the worst Spanish winter in 20 years. The battle was one of the bloodiest actions of the war, with the city changing hands several times by first falling to the Republicans and eventually being retaken by the Nationalists. In the course of the fighting, Teruel was subjected to heavy artillery and aerial bombardment. In the two-month battle, both factions together took 110,000 casualties.

With his superiority in men and material, the Nationalist leader Francisco Franco regained Teruel. This battle became the military turning point of the war.

The Republic's decision to move against Teruel was motivated by several strategic priorities. Republican military leaders thought that Teruel was not strongly held and sought to regain the initiative by its capture. By 1937, the Teruel salient was similar to the fingernail on a finger of Nationalist territory inserted into Republican Spain, and its capture would shorten the lines of communication between central Republican Spain and Valencia on the coast. Teruel was surrounded on three sides by Republican Spain. In addition, Teruel was a symbol of Nationalist power on the Aragon front.

Indalecio Prieto, the Republic's Minister of War, wanted a spectacular victory to reflect well on his tenure and to show how the army could function under his reorganization. A victory at Teruel would also aid the government of Prime Minister Juan Negrín in its quest to take over the industries of Catalonia from their workers. Lastly, Republican intelligence learned that Franco intended to start a major offensive against Madrid in the Guadalajara sector on 18 December and so the Republicans wanted to divert the Nationalists away from the Madrid area. The Republic, therefore, started the battle on 15 December.

Teruel, in southern Aragon, had a population of 20,000 and was the remote capital of a poor province. It had been fortified in 1170 to buffer the warring Moorish and Christian states. In 1937, it served essentially the same purpose by separating the Republicans in Valencia from the Nationalists in Zaragoza. Because of its elevation in the mountains (3,050 ft; 930 m), it usually has the lowest annual winter temperature in Spain. The town was a walled and mountain-ringed natural fortress on a high knoll above the confluence of the Turia and Alfambra rivers. It is surrounded by a geological potpourri of scragged gorges, tooth-shaped peaks and twisted ridge fingers. West of the town, the Calatayud highway runs up a slight gradient to a pancake-flat plain around the village of Concud, about 3 mi (4.8 km) away. A key position was the ridge to the west of the town known as La Muela de Teruel (Teruel's Tooth). Teruel's defensive position was much improved by previously prepared trenches and barbed wire because of its position protruding into Republican territory.

The Spanish Republican Army was under the command of Juan Hernández Saravia, who had reorganised the army almost from scratch. The Republicans had a total of 100,000 men in two armies. The Army of the Levante was to conduct the main part of the assault supported by the Army of the East. Saravia wanted the coup de main against Teruel to be an all-Spanish operation without the assistance of the International Brigades. Among his commanders was the trustworthy and able communist commander Enrique Líster and so Saravia chose Lister's division to lead the first assault.

Colonel Domingo Rey d'Harcourt was the Nationalist commander at Teruel when the battle began. The Teruel salient had a Nationalist defending force of about 9,500 men, including civilians. After the attack began, Rey d'Harcourt eventually consolidated his remaining defenders into a garrison to defend the town. Teruel's Nationalist garrison numbered between 2,000 and 6,000 according to various estimates. The garrison numbered probably about 4,000, half of them civilians.

Lister's Republican division attacked Teruel without any preliminary aerial or artillery bombardment while snow fell on 15 December 1937. Lister and his fellow commander, Colonel Enrique Fernández Heredia, moved to surround the town. They immediately gained a position on the heights of La Muela, and by evening, they encircled the city. Rey d'Harcourt pulled his defences into the town and, by 17 December, had given up trying to keep a foothold on La Muela. Francisco Franco, the Nationalist commander, finally decided on 23 December to aid the defenders at Teruel since he had decided that as a matter of policy, no provincial capital would be allowed to fall to the Republicans. Such a loss would be a political failure, and Franco determined to make no concession. He had just started a major offensive at Guadalajara, and the relief of Teruel forced him to abandon that offensive, much to the disgust of his Italian and German allies. The Nationalist relief of Teruel also signified that Franco had given up the idea of a knockout blow to end the war and had accepted a long war of attrition, to be won by the force of arms and by foreign assistance.