The Spanish Civil War

by Hugh Thomas

  No doubt, however, the Russian ministry of defence was concerned in the plan from an early stage, for the excellent reason that there was a precedent for this international force in the Red Army, during the Russian Civil War. The designation ‘International Brigade’ had even been used, along with other names such as First International Legion of the Red Army, the International Red Army, and the First Revolutionary International Detachment. Into these forces in support of the revolution in Russia there had been pressed volunteers, or ex–prisoners of war from Austro-Hungarian or German or Bulgarian armies. Many of these men served in the Ukraine under no less a person than Antonov Ovsëenko, in 1936 the Russian consul general in Barcelona. Some of them were even still available in sections of the Russian army. Presumably it seemed convenient to Stalin if an experiment which had been tried out in one civil war might be employed again in another.3 The Comintern had been concerned after all with armed insurrection in the 1920s and Togliatti, now so closely concerned with events in Spain, had written part of the Comintern’s technical manual on the subject.4

  In addition, many Italian, German and other exiles from fascist or right-wing authoritarian régimes, along with others still in those countries, themselves longed for the outbreak of a real war against fascism:1 ‘We had a greater need of going to Spain than the Spanish republic had need of us’, wrote one Italian exile, Emilio Lussu.2 ‘Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia’ was a famous cry of Rosselli, echoed by many others. Earlier in September, Randolfo Pacciardi, an Italian liberal republican émigré, had approached the Spanish government with the aim of forming an Italian legion in Spain, independent of political parties, to be recruited in Paris. But Largo Caballero opposed the idea.3 Now, after new disasters on the battlefront, he altered his view. Luigi Longo, the prominent young Italian, Stephan Wisniewski, a Polish communist, and Pierre Rebière, from France, negotiated in Madrid on behalf of the Comintern on 22 October.4 The three visited Azaña and Largo Caballero, who handed over responsibility to Martínez Barrio (then presiding over a committee to reorganize the army). It does not seem as if any one of these three republican politicians were enthusiastic for the idea, but they believed that the publicity at least would be good.

  The formation of International Brigades then became the work of the Comintern. Each communist party was instructed to raise a given number of volunteers. In many cases the prescribed figure was higher than local parties could attain. Most of the ablest leaders of the Comintern, not already involved in Spain, were employed in this way. The future Marshal Tito, Josip Broz, for example, was in Paris organizing, from a small left-bank hotel, the flow of recruits through his so-called ‘secret railway’, which provided passports for East European volunteers, and the experienced Jules Humbert-Droz found himself doing the same thing in Switzerland.5 Where the volunteer was not a communist, he was investigated by an NKVD representative and by a communist doctor—the latter at the French-Spanish border.1 Many admittedly escaped this security checking, however, especially those who joined the volunteers in Spain or en route. Some adventurers in search of excitement joined—such as Nick Gillain, a Belgian, who later gave his reason for joining up as ‘spirit of adventure, lassitude, and this rainy autumn of 1936’.2 About 60 per cent were communists before volunteering, and a further 20 per cent probably became communists during their experiences in Spain. From all countries (including Britain), 80 per cent of the Brigades were members of the working class.3 Most were young men, though some of the Germans and Italians, militant refugees from fascist régimes, were veterans of the First World War. Many, especially among the French, were at that time unemployed4 and many had experience of street-fighting against ‘the fascists’ in Berlin, Paris and even London. That was not the same as fighting the ‘Moors’, or the Foreign Legion, as they soon discovered.

  About 500 to 600 refugee communists were sent to Spain who had been exiles in Russia.5 Among these were men such as Stern (‘Kleber’), Zaisser (Gómez), Zalka (‘Lukács’) and Galicz (‘Gal’) who had fought in both the First World War and probably in the International Brigades in the Russian army. They played a leading part in those in Spain.6

  An English communist volunteer aptly summed up the motives of his countrymen for volunteering by saying, ‘undoubtedly the great majority are here for the sake of an ideal, no matter what motive prompted them to seek one’.7 Many volunteers regarded the battle which they were fighting in Spain as a first step in the struggle against the enemy at home; particularly the Italians, who were able to use Spanish radio stations to broadcast in Italian against Mussolini: ‘the artillery of the loudspeaker’, as ‘Carlos’ put it.1 The Spanish war thus rejuvenated the Italian anti-fascist struggle. A Czech communist, such as Artur London, could regard his service in the International Brigades as part of the anti-Nazi struggle in Central Europe.2

  The central recruiting office of the Brigade was in the rue de Lafayette in Paris. Karol Šwierczewski, a Polish colonel in the Russian service known as ‘Walter’, was military adviser, at the head of a bureau technique in the nearby rue de Chabrol. Šwierczewski had fought in the First World War for Russia. He then took part in the Russian Revolution and Civil War, later becoming a professor in the Moscow Military School.3 The theme of recruitment propaganda was the slogan that Spain should be ‘the grave of European fascism’. Volunteers signed on without a contract and without knowledge of how long they would be fighting—an indefinite commitment which later led to trouble. From France, the volunteers were sent to Spain by train or boat. They then made their way, or were sent, to the new base at Albacete, halfway between Madrid and Valencia, surrounded by the dull wastes of La Mancha, and known for several centuries for the manufacture of knives.4

  The first contingent of volunteers, five hundred strong, left the Gare d’Austerlitz, in Paris, by train 77 (‘the train of volunteers’) and travelled via Perpignan and Barcelona, to find on arrival on 14 October at Albacete that little preparations had been made. The barracks of the civil guard had been made over to them, but the rooms on the ground floor were still stained with the blood of men killed there on 25 July. The International Brigaders squeamishly preferred, therefore, to crowd into the rooms upstairs to sleep.5 The first group were nearly all Frenchmen, with some Polish and German exiles from Paris. There were also some White Russians. These new recruits were shortly afterwards joined by many of the foreign volunteers who had fought in Aragon and in the Tagus valley, including the remains of the German Thaelmann Centuria, some from the Italian Gastone-Sozzi Centuria, and the French ‘Commune de Paris’ Battalion. The young English poet John Cornford was among those volunteers (though he had returned home to England on sick leave after his fighting in August). The day after arrival at Albacete, all volunteers would be registered. A clerk would ask if there were officers, non-commissioned officers, cooks, typists, artillerymen, riders, or machine-gunners present. Many foolishly replied according to their ambitions rather than to their abilities. The volunteers were then organized in language groups, with appropriate names. The British volunteers were as yet too few to form a separate battalion and some were therefore put in with the Germans and some with the French.1

  The supreme ‘troika’ in command of the base was André Marty as commander, Luigi Longo (‘Gallo’) as inspector-general, and Giuseppe di Vittorio (‘Nicoletti’) as chief political commissar.2 The two Italians were men of ability and humanity.3 Marty lacked both. Catalan by blood, born in Perpignan, he was the son of a worker condemned to death in his absence for his part in the Paris Commune. He had first come to prominence in 1919 when, as a seaman-machinist, he had led the mutiny of the French Black Sea fleet against orders received to support the White Russian armies. He became a communist later. His rise in the French communist party during the succeeding years was due to his record as ‘le mutin de la mer noire’. He owed his appointment at Albacete to his alleged military knowledge and to his favour with Stalin as one who had refused to take up arms against the struggling Soviet Union seventeen ye
ars before. He was a member of the seven-man directorate (secretariat) of ECCI, the Comintern executive, and, given the importance of the Spanish venture, it was inevitable that one of that body should be the International Brigades’ chief. Unfortunately he was obsessed with fear of fascist or Trotskyist spies.1 He was followed to Spain by his wife, Pauline—whom even he seemed sometimes to try and avoid. His appointment was one of Stalin’s many errors of judgement even on small matters. Only Stalin himself had a more suspicious nature than André Marty.

  The chief of staff of the base was a crony of Marty’s, a Parisian municipal councillor, Vital Gayman, who went in Spain by the common name of ‘Vidal’.2 Captain Alloca, an Italian tailor from Lyons, was in command of a cavalry base at the nearby town of La Roda, while a Czech, the able technician and future writer Captain Miksche, set up an artillery school at Chinchilla de Monte Aragón.3 The first infantry training commander at Albacete was a German journalist, Ernst Adam—not a communist—who afterwards moved to the front. He was succeeded by an incompetent Bulgarian who owed his appointment to his part in the explosion in Santa Sofia in 1923—scarcely a very military operation.4 Albacete soon became too full for all the trainees, and the neighbouring pueblo of Madrigueras was taken over by the Italians, Tarazona de la Mancha by the Slavs, La Roda by the French, and Mahora by the Germans. Another Bulgarian communist, Tsvetan Angelov Kristanov, who had long been an emigrant in Russia, ran the medical services of the International Brigades under the appealingly Scandinavian nom de guerre of Oskar Telge, with a staff of many nationalities beneath him,5 while Marty’s wife, Pauline, acted as inspector of the hospitals. Louis Fischer, the American journalist, nominally representing the Nation in Spain, acted first as quartermaster general, until he quarrelled with Marty, when his post was taken by yet another Bulgarian, Ljubomir Karbov.1 The German Walter Ulbricht organized a division of the NKVD within the Brigades, where he investigated German, Swiss, and Austrian ‘Trotskyists’.2 The Brigade were provided with uniforms by the French communist party, including a round Alpine woollen hat. Discipline was enforced with an iron hand.

  The Spanish people and the Spanish people’s army have not yet conquered Fascism [Marty told the Brigade]. Why? Is it because they have lacked enthusiasm? A thousand times no. There are three things they have lacked, three things which we must have—political unity, military leaders, and discipline.3

  When he spoke of military leaders, he indicated a short figure with grey hair, his overcoat buttoned up to his neck—‘General Emilio Kléber’. Kléber was now forty-one, a native of Bucovina, then Roumania, at his birth part of Austria-Hungary. His real name was Lazar or Manfred Stern, his nom de guerre that of one of the ablest of the French revolutionary generals. In the First World War, he served as a captain in the Austrian army. Captured by the Russians, he was imprisoned in Siberia. At the Revolution, he escaped and joined the Bolshevik party. After taking part in the Russian Civil War, and forming a part of the International Brigades active there, he joined the Comintern military section. He was sent on confidential missions in the Chinese Wars and perhaps also to Germany.4 Other rumours made Kléber a veritable Flying Dutchman of revolutionary war. Now appropriately he arrived in Spain, as the first leader of the first International Brigade. He was built up well by propaganda, as a ‘soldier of fortune of naturalized Canadian nationality’. On being introduced to his future command by Marty, he stepped forward and gave the salute of the clenched fist, amid a roar of applause. Marty went on: ‘There are some who are impatient, who wish to rush off to the front at once. These are criminals. When the first International Brigade goes into action, they will be properly trained men, with good rifles.’ So the training at Albacete went on. The difficulties of language were surmounted. The different ways in which the nations carried out their left and right turns in drill were coordinated. Only the Germans, however, took drill seriously or were any good at it. Irishmen enlivened the dark barracks with doleful songs. In a dozen languages slogans were scrawled on walls: ‘¡Proletarios de Todos Países! ¡Uníos!’ ‘Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!’ ‘Prolétaires de Tous Pays, Unissez-vous!’ ‘Pracownic świata, lacžüe sie!’ ‘Proletari di tutti i Paesi, Unitevi!’ ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’

  During the next few months, volunteers continued to stream into Albacete. The poet Auden1 described the urgency of the appeal of Spain in words still irresistible:

  Many have heard it on remote peninsulas,

  On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fishermen’s islands

  Or the corrupt heart of a city.

  Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.

  They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch

  Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;

  They floated over the oceans;

  They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

  On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot

  Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;

  On that tableland scored by rivers,

  Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

  Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond

  To the medicine ad. and the brochure of winter cruises

  Have become invading battalions;

  And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin

  Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.

  Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom

  As the ambulance and the sandbag;

  Our hours of friendship into a people’s army.2

  Some volunteers came by sea from Marseilles, some across the Pyrenees by secret paths unknown to, or unwatched by, the French police carrying out the orders of their non-interventionary government. Those who crossed the Pyrenees might stay one night in the old castle of Figueras. By both routes, nearly all went through Barcelona, or through Alicante, where they were greeted with enthusiasm by crowds shouting ‘salud’, ‘no pasarán’, and ‘UHP’. The streets would fill with Spaniards singing the ‘International’, ‘The Young Guard’, ‘The Red Flag’, or the ‘Hymn of Riego’, or all of them. The train onwards would stop at small stations, where peasants would press forward offering wine and grapes, giving the clenched-fist salute, and shouting ‘¡Viva Rusia!’ Local communist and other Popular Front parties would crowd the platforms with the names of their villages inscribed on banners. Frequently the recruits would arrive drunk. One Irish recruit from Liverpool, who afterwards wrote a Candide-like description of his experiences, began on his first night at Albacete a saga of illnesses, drinking bouts and visits to the Brigade penitentiary that lasted for six months.

  Not everyone was enthusiastic. The anarchists distrusted the International Brigades and gave orders to their militants who controlled the French frontier passes to oppose their entry. But ‘after requests by international personalities’, wrote a leading anarchist, ‘we desisted, though continuing to believe that these persons were not wanted. Arms were needed, not men.’1

  As the nucleus of the Brigades arrived in Albacete, Stalin telegraphed an open letter to José Díaz, the Spanish communist leader, published in Mundo Obrero on 17 October, saying that the ‘liberation of Spain from the yoke of the fascist reactionaries is not the private concern of Spaniards alone, but the common cause of progressive humanity’. By late October organizations for aid to the republic had indeed sprung up in nearly every country in the world. Friends of Spain, Spanish medical aid committees, committees for Spanish relief were established everywhere. Behind them all lurked the shadow of the communist parties. Philip Toynbee, a communist at Oxford, described how his orders that term were ‘to proliferate Spanish defence committees throughout the university, as a moth lays its eggs in a clothes cupboard’.1 Spain also served other purposes: the leader of the Indian congress party, Jawaharlal Nehru, writing for the Indian committee for food for Spain, pointed out, ‘By sending a medical miss
ion to China, by giving foodstuffs to the Spanish people, we compel the world’s attention to our viewpoint.2 Thereby, we begin to function in the international sphere, and the voice of India begins to be heard in the councils of the nations.’3

  Göring in Berlin was meanwhile complaining that he did not have enough people to handle German deliveries to and from Spain. Hess then put the Nazi party’s foreign organization at his disposal for this, Eberhard von Jagwitz at its head. Jagwitz thenceforth worked directly under Göring, rooms being provided for him in the Nazi party offices. It was only now on 16 October in fact that the German foreign and economic ministries heard of the existence of ROWAK and HISMA.4 They swallowed their surprise. Bernhardt had arranged for a ship full of copper belonging to Río Tinto to be confiscated in Cádiz and sent to Hamburg. When Göring asked Bernhardt one day in October how German aid was to be paid for, Bernhardt could reply, ‘There is a ship full of copper waiting for you.’5

  The Non-Intervention Committee was still in being. But on 23 October, Maisky announced that Russia could no more consider herself bound by the Agreement ‘to any greater extent than any of the remaining participants’ in the committee.6 The upshot was Portugal’s breach of diplomatic relations with the Spanish republic because of Russian charges against it. Russia did not, as her press had suggested was probable, now leave the committee. That may have been due to Litvinov’s return from Geneva. He probably pointed out that such an abandonment would mean a breach with France and Britain and, therefore, a blow to the policy of collective security. Lord Plymouth thereupon proposed the control of the supply of war material to Spain by, for example, establishing observers at Spanish ports who could report what they saw to the Committee.1 This aristocratic voice of reason seemed, however, sadly inappropriate.