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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2021
Despite considerable scholarly and popular interest in the International Brigades, which fought on the side of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–9, traditional approaches centred on ‘national’ contingents of foreign volunteers have left significant gaps in historical knowledge. In particular, relations between the foreign volunteers and their Spanish hosts have received little attention, even though these relationships were fundamental to the everyday experience of volunteering, as well as affecting the International Brigades’ cohesion during their time in Spain. This account introduces a range of new archival material relating to the English-speaking XV International Brigade, arguing that pervasive structural and cultural factors led to a complex and variable set of outcomes that defy binary categorisation. In doing so, this study contributes to an emerging new literature on transnational approaches to the Spanish Civil War and interwar anti-fascisms, as well as comparative approaches to foreign fighter mobilisations.
1 García, Hugo, ‘Transnational History: A New Paradigm for Anti-Fascist Studies?’, Contemporary European History 25, 4 (2016), 563–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For varied uses of such methods, see Michael Seidman, Transatlantic Antifascisms: From the Spanish Civil War to the End of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Kasper Brasken, The International Workers Relief, Communism, and Transnational Solidarity: Willi Münzenberg in Weimar Germany (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Brigitte Studer, The Transnational World of the Cominternians (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
2 On the conflict and its causes, see Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); Paul Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution 1931–1936 (London: Routledge, 1994); Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (London: Penguin, 2003); Stanley Payne, The Spanish Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
3 The best overview is Remí Skoutelsky, Novedad en el Frente: Las Brigadas Internacionales en la Guerra Civil (Madrid: Ediciones Martínez Roca, 2006). See also Michael Jackson, Fallen Sparrows: The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1994); R. Dan Richardson, Comintern Army: The International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982); Andre Castells, Las Brigadas Internacionales de la Guerra de España (Barcelona: Ariel, 1974); Verle Johnston, Legions of Babel: The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1967); Vincent Brome, The International Brigades: Spain 1936–1939 (London: Heinemann, 1965). For a more complete overview of early scholarship, see Manuel Requena Gallego, ‘Las Brigadas Internacionales: una aproximación historiográfica’, Ayer 56 (2004), 11–35.
4 For international contexts and responses, see Michael Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
5 On the specific history of Islamist foreign fighters, see Hegghammer, Thomas, ‘The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad’, International Security, 35 (2010), 53–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Nir Arielli, From Byron to bin Laden: A History of Foreign War Volunteers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018); Nir Arielli and Bruce Collins, eds., Transnational Soldiers: Foreign Military Enlistment in the Modern Era (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); David Malet, Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civic Conflicts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Christine Krüger and Sonja Levsen, eds., War Volunteering in Modern Times. From the French Revolution to the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Enrico Acciai, Garibaldi's Radical Legacy: Traditions of War Volunteering in Southern Europe, 1861–1945 (London: Routledge, 2020). In a British context, see Elizabeth Roberts, ‘Freedom, Faction, Fame and Blood’: British Soldiers of Conscience in Greece, Spain and Finland (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2010).
7 On this neglect, and as part of a journal special issue designed to address it, see Arielli, Nir and Rodogno, Davide, ‘Transnational Encounters: Hosting and Remembering Twentieth Century Foreign War Volunteers’, Journal of Modern European History 14, 3 (2016), 315CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yet despite the stated collective focus on the ‘encounter’, the only submission to actually employ this framework was Arielli, Nir, ‘Recognition, Immigration and Divergent Expectations: The Reception of Foreign Volunteers in Israel during and after the Wars of 1948 and 1967’, Journal of Modern European History 14, 3 (2016), 374–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 In English-speaking contexts alone, see Peter Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Cecil Eby, Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007); Richard Baxell, Unlikely Warriors: The British in the Spanish Civil War (London: Aurum, 2012); James Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Robert Stradling, The Irish and the Spanish Civil War 1936–1939: Crusades in Conflict (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); Fearghal McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999); Michael Petrou, Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008).
9 Stradling, Irish, 154–9; Eby, Comrades, 34–5 and Baxell, Unlikely Warriors, 133–4.
10 Lisa Kirschenbaum, International Communism and the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Gerben Zaagsma, Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (London: Bloomsbury, 2017); Kruizinga, Samuël, ‘Struggling to Fit in: The Dutch in a Transnational Army, 1936–1939’, Journal of Modern European History 16, 2 (2018), 183–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marco, Jorge and Thomas, Maria, ‘“Mucho malo for fascisti”: Languages and Transnational Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War’, War and Society 38, 2 (2019), 139–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Kirschenbaum provides a notable exception, dealing with such questions in some depth, albeit with important differences in focus and analytical approach. Kirschenbaum, International Communism, 83–116. Yet even otherwise excellent accounts often assume that ‘contact with Spaniards was limited.’ McLennan, Josie, ‘“I Wanted to Be a Little Lenin”: Ideology and the German International Brigade Volunteers’, Journal of Contemporary History 41:2 (2006), 289Google Scholar. Similar historiographical ‘blindspots’ have been noted in other contexts. Craig Gibbs, Behind the Front: British Soldiers and Civilians, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 7–9.
12 Kirschenbaum, International Communism, 5. Some existing scholarship deals with this specific unit. Stradling, Robert, ‘English-speaking Units of the International Brigades: War, Politics and Discipline’, Journal of Contemporary History 45, 4 (2010), 744–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Antonio Celada and Daniel Pastor Garcia, Los brigadistas de habla inglesa y la Guerra Civil Española (Salamanca: Ambos Mundos, 2006).
13 Zaagsma, Jewish Volunteers, 13–14.
14 Ariel Mae Lambe, No Barrier Can Contain It: Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
15 While a broad range of archival material has been consulted here, the Archivo General Militar, Ávila (AGMA), Archivo General de Guerra Civil Española (AGGCE) and the Conferación Nacional del Trabajo archives at the International Institute for Social History (CNT–IISH) provided rich new perspectives on relations between the International Brigades and Spaniards.
16 Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 291.
17 Positive examples include Johnson, Legions, 91–2, Richard Baxell, British Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War (London: Routledge, 2004), 143–6. More critically, see Hopkins, Heart of the Fire, 214–16. Ronald Radosh, Mary Habeck and Grigory Sevostianov, eds., Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 240–8; Garcia, Daniel Pastor and Celada, Antonio, ‘The Victors Write History, the Vanquished Literature: Myth, Distortion and Truth in the XV Brigade’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 89, 7–8 (2012), 320Google Scholar; Stradling, ‘English-speaking Units’, 751.
18 E.g. Daniel Gray, Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War (Edinburgh: Luath, 2008), 70.
19 Baxell, British Volunteers, 144–8. Similarly, Skoutelsky, Novedad, 280–4.
20 Eby, Comrades, xxii–xxiii. The memoir is Fausto Villar Esteban, Un Valencianito en La Brigada Lincoln [Unpublished Manuscript], Labadie Collection, University of Michigan.
21 E.g. Eby, Comrades, 277–8.
22 James Matthews, Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 12.
23 While not all national contingents have received detailed analysis, see Baxell, British Volunteers, 8–24; Petrou, Renegades, 10–25; Remí Skoutelsky, ‘L'Engagement des Volontaires Français en Espagne Republicaine’, Le Mouvement Social, 181 (1997), 7–29; Michael Uhl, Mythos Spanien. Das Erbe der Internationalen Brigaden in der DDR (Bonn: Dietz, 2004), 53–65.
24 This differential is best demonstrated by the fact that the personal files of British, Canadian and American volunteers alone are stored across over 300 folders while just 12 such folders relate to Spaniards across the entire International Brigades. RGASPI, 545/6/100–218; 455–67; 541–576; 855–1019.
25 A random sample (c. 15%) of this list was processed to inform this snapshot. ‘List of Spanish members of International Brigades’, AGGCE, PS-44/3.
26 Jornalero refers to a casual day labourer, a form of employment generally associated with seasonal agricultural work. Comparisons from Baxell, British Volunteers, 16, 21 and Peter Carroll, From Guernica to Human Rights: Essays on the Spanish Civil War (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2015), 61–2. The Canadian contingent is a partial exception, containing a significant number of ‘lumberjacks’. Petrou, Renegades, 111.
27 ‘List of Spanish members of International Brigades’, AGGCE. This trend is confirmed in other documents, e.g. ‘Proposiciones sobre la organización de las Brigadas Internacionales’, 11 Aug. 1937, RGASPI, 545/1/1/27.
28 Skoutelsky, Novedad, 165–71.
29 E.g. Hamish Fraser, The Truth About Spain (Oxford: Catholic Social Guild, 1949), 4.
30 Matthews, Reluctant Warriors, 219. See also Skoutelsky, Novedad, 280.
31 Cuartel General del Generalísimo (CGG) to Ejército del Norte, 29 May 1938, AGMA, C.1,1 d.9.
32 Matthews, Reluctant Warriors, 30.
33 Villar Esteban, Un Valencianito, 5–6.
34 Villar Esteban, Un Valencianito, 5.
35 Skoutelsky, Novedad, 394–5.
36 CGG to Ejército del Norte, 22 May 1938, AGMA, C.1,1 d.6.
37 ‘Meeting of Political Commissars of the Battalion’, 8 June 1937, RGASPI, 545/3/435/50.
38 ‘Meeting of the Political Commissars’, 8 May 1937, RGASPI, 545/3/435/43.
39 ‘Memorandum sur la situation des Brigades Internationales’, July 1937, RGASPI, 545/1/1/8; ‘Meeting of Political Commissars’, 8 June 1937, RGASPI. The phenomenon is confirmed in the CNT archives. ‘Informa de la Columna Internacional’, May 1937, IISH-CNT, File 005E.8.
40 André Marty allegedly confiscated ‘personal parcels sent for the Canadians on the grounds that such preferential treatment accentuated national differences and was helping Fascism’, Alexander to Pollitt, 26 May 1938, MML, Box C, File 22/6.
41 Orden General del Día, 23 Oct. 1937, RGASPI, 545/3/2/170.
42 ‘Report on and Recommendations re the English Battalion’, [Dec. 1937?], AGGCE, PS-Aragon, Box 6, File 9.
43 On the relative political homogeneity of international recruits from 1937, see Fraser Raeburn, ‘Politics, Networks and Community: Recruitment for the International Brigades Reassessed’, Journal of Contemporary History 55, 4 (2020), 727–36. See also Kirschenbaum, International Communism; Richardson, Comintern Army.
44 Helen Graham, ‘The Socialist Youth in the JSU: The Experience of Organizational Unity, 1936–8’, in Blinkhorn (ed.), Spain in Conflict, 1931–1939 (London, 1986), 83–102.
45 ‘Relación de los Comisarios y Delegados de la XV Brigada’, 10 Feb. 1938, RGASPI, 545/3/452/43.
46 Garry McCartney, Tameside Local Studies Archive (TLS), Manchester Studies (MS), Tape 168.
47 E.g. ‘Informa de la Columna Internacional’, May 1937, IISH-CNT. Existing accounts provide an exclusively international perspective, e.g. Johnston, Legions, 91.
48 ‘Brigadas Internacionales’, 14 July 1937, IISH-CNT, File 94H.3.
49 The reply asked the Catalan Regional Committee to document the incidents described, ‘con todo detalle’, so that they could, if necessary, publicly expose it, but also that action without concrete evidence was impossible, indicating some scepticism. Comité Nacional (Sección Defensa) to Comité Regional de Cataluña, 17 July 1937, IISH-CNT, File 94H.3.
50 Villar Esteban, Un Valencianito, 60–1.
51 ‘Political Development of the XVth International Brigade’, [1938?], RGASPI, 545/6/21/7.
52 Sección Defensa de CNT to XV Brigade, 27 April 1938, IISH-CNT, File 94H.3.
53 José Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution: Volume 3 (Hastings: Christie, 2006), 137–57. See also Bizcarrando, Marta and Elorza, Antonio, ‘Las Brigadas Internacionales. Imágenes desde la izquierda’, Ayer, 56 (2004), 70–8Google Scholar.
54 Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War (London: Janus, 1999), 947, 1044–5.
55 E.g. Gates to La Federación Local UGT-CNT Barcelona, 8 July 1938, IISH-CNT, File C66.
56 This is broadly confirmed in the records of other groups. Sección Defensa del Comité Nacional de CNT to Ejecutivo de Catalunya, 16 July 1938, IISH 94H.3.
57 Tom Murray in Ian MacDougall (ed.), Voices from the Spanish Civil War (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1986), 313–14.
58 ‘Report on and Recommendations re the English Battalion’, AGGCE.
59 Ibid.
60 For an overview, see James Matthews, “The Vanguard of Sacrifice”? Political Commissars in the Republican Popular Army during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939’, War in History 21, 1 (2013), 82–101.
61 The ‘weakness’ of Spanish commissars was noted as early as August 1937. ‘Report on morale of XV Brigade’, 8 Aug. 1937, RGASPI, 545/3/435/75.
62 Villar Esteban, Un Valencianito, v–vi.
63 E.g. McLennan, ‘“Little Lenin”, 289. For comparison, Krista Cowman, ‘“The … “parlez” is not going on very well “avec moi””: Learning and Using “Trench French” on the Western Front’, in Walker and Declerc, eds., Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 25–43.
64 Gilmour to Paterson, 20 April 1937, MML, Box 50, File Gl/19.
65 George to Lily Murray, 24 May 1937, NLS, TMP, Box 1, File 4.
66 Walter Gregory, The Shallow Grave (London: Gollancz, 1986), 94–5.
67 Marco and Thomas, ‘Mucho Malo’, 157–9.
68 Park to ‘Hugh’, 27 Jan. 1938, MML, Box A-12, File Pa/6.
69 Volunteer for Liberty, 23 Feb. 1937, 2.
70 ‘English-Spanish Grammar’, 1938, MML, Box 22, File B/8. For an overview of language policy, see Marco and Thomas, ‘Mucho Malo’, 143–9.
71 ‘British Political Commissars Conference’, 21 Nov. 1937, MML, Box C, File 19.
72 Tapsell to [Pollitt?], 9 Aug. 1937, MML, Box C, File 16/1.
73 Fraser, Truth, 4.
74 Quinn, TLS, MS, Tape 202.
75 Londragan in MacDougall, Voices from the Spanish Civil War, 179.
76 James Maley, Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, Tape 11947/3/1.
77 Tom Wintringham, English Captain (London, 2011), 22.
78 ‘Informe sobre la 15a Brigada Internacional’, 21 Jan. 1938, RGASPI, 545/3/7/42–3.
79 ‘Report on morale’, 8 Aug. 1937, RGASPI.
80 ‘Informe que hace el compañero Jack sobre la 15 Brigada’, 1 Dec. 1937, RGASPI, 545/3/433/133–4.
81 ‘Informe que hace el compañero Jack’, 1 Dec. 1937, RGASPI.
82 E.g., Volunteer for Liberty, 13 Dec. 1937, 5.
83 Nuestro Combate, 23 March 1937, MML, Box D-7, File F/13.
84 Circular, [May–Jun. 1938?], RGASPI, 545/3/430/327.
85 ‘Parte extraordinario’, 6 Sept. 1938, RGASPI 545/3/435/171–3.
86 Paul Wendorf to Sylvia Geiser, 16 June 1938, in Cary Nelson and Jefferson Hendricks, eds., Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade From the Spanish Civil War (New York: Routledge, 1996), 388.
87 E.g. ‘Información militar practica al prisionero José Garrido Barrero’, 9 Dec. 1937, AGMA, C.1221,18 d.2–3.
88 Boletín de Información, Grupo de divisiones del sur del Ebro, 12 Dec. 1937, AGMA, C.1221,16 d.9–10. Similarly, Boletín de Información, Ejército del Norte, Jan. 1938, AGMA, C.1221,33, d.8.
89 ‘La situation morale au sein des B.I.’, 10–20 Oct. 1937, RGASPI, 545/2/159/10. For further reports, see RGASPI, 545/2/156–9; AGGCE, PS-Barcelona, Box 15, File 8.
90 For discussion see Arielli, Byron, 80–6; Fraser Raeburn, Scots and the Spanish Civil War: Solidarity, Activism and Humanitarianism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 65–73.
91 This echoes the conclusions regarding relations between national groups in the International Brigade in Kruizinga, ‘Struggling to Fit in’, 201–2.
92 Arielli, ‘Recognition, Immigration and Divergent Expectations’, 376–8; F. Pretorius, ‘Welcome but not that Welcome: The Relations between Foreign Volunteers and the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902’, in Christine Krüger and Sonja Levsen, eds., War Volunteering in Modern Times: From the French Revolution to the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 122–49; O'Connor, Steven and Gutmann, Martin, ‘Under a Foreign Flag: Integrating Foreign Units and Personnel in the British and German Armed Forces, 1940–1945’, Journal of Modern European History 14, 3 (2016), 321–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
