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Title: The Other Volunteers Author: Kenyon Zimmer Date: 2016 Language: en Topics: Spanish Revolution, Spanish Civil War, volunteers, analysis Source: Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2016, pp. 19--52
In 1933, observing Spainâs rapid transition away from monarchy and
dictatorship, Spanish American anarchist Maximiliano Olay wrote that
Spainâs anarchist movement "has not yet reached its peak, and... when it
does, the present republican form of government will go the way of its
predecessors." In its place, he predicted that "we may soon hear the
news that Spain is no longer a capitalist country, that modern,
constructive anarchism--anarchist communism--has won a chance to put its
philosophy to the test, and... is privileged at last to prove its
virtues to an unbelieving world." [1] Olay had reason for optimism. By
the mid-1930s, there were over a million members enrolled in Spainâs
anarcho-syndicalist Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo (National
Confederation of Labor, or CNT), the countryâs largest labor
organization, which in turn followed the direction of the smaller
Federacion Anarquista Iberica (Iberian Anarchist Federation, or FAI).
[2] When the "Nationalists"--a right-wing alliance of Catholics,
monarchists, and fascists within the Spanish military--rose up against
Spainâs Popular Front government on 17 through 18 July 1936, they were
defeated in nearly every major city by a combination of police and armed
workers. The CNTâs preexisting defense committees led the resistance in
the industrial center of Barcelona, and "with no transition at all, the
defense cadres became Peopleâs Militias," the improvised new armed
forces of the Popular Front. [3] With the virtual collapse of Republican
government authority, the CNT found itself in effective control of much
of Catalonia and Aragon. Though the anarchists refused to seize power
(as doing so would violate their anti-authoritarian principles), they
swiftly instituted workersâ control in most of Spainâs industrial
enterprises and collectivized more than half the agricultural land
outside of Nationalist hands. [4] Olayâs prediction was becoming a
reality, and beleaguered anarchists in the United States found new hope
in what they called the Spanish Revolution. They mobilized the meager
resources at their disposal to aid the CNT, and some left for Spain to
fight alongside their Spanish comrades.
The voluminous literature on foreign volunteers in the Spanish Civil
War, however, takes almost no notice of these anarchists or of the CNTâs
accomplishments on and off the battlefield. Instead, historians have
focused almost entirely on the Communist-organized International
Brigades and continue to debate whether their members were heroic
"premature antifascists" defending Spanish democracy or naive victims of
Stalinist machinations. [5] This scholarship, still defined by the
dichotomies of the Cold War, lacks analytical space to accommodate the
anarchists and the revolution they supported. As Noam Chomsky observed
more than half a century ago, for liberal historians sympathetic to the
Republican cause, "the revolution itself was merely a kind of irrelevant
nuisance, a minor irritant diverting energy from the struggle to save
the bourgeois government." [6] This remains true of most chroniclers of
the American section of the International Brigades, the famed Abraham
Lincoln Battalion, who conclude that American volunteers "were not
revolutionaries but men committed to stopping the growth of fascism,"
who "went to Spain... not to accelerate social revolution but to
stabilize it." [7]
Although foreign anarchists fought alongside, and in some cases within
the same units as, the Communists and fellow travelers who constituted
the bulk of International Brigades volunteers, they were engaged in an
entirely different struggle--one to protect and expand the revolution
headed by the CNT against both fascism and any attempt by the Republican
government to constrain its progress. Refocusing the story of Americans
in the Spanish Civil War on the anarchists highlights several forgotten
dimensions of the conflict: the international impact of, and support
for, Spainâs unfolding anarchist revolution; the important military role
of the CNTâs militias, including the foreign fighters within them; and
the overwhelming importance that the war came to hold for the American
anarchist movement. These, in turn, emphasize the complex and multipolar
nature of "the good fight" and push analyses of its international
dimensions beyond the tired disputes of the Cold War era. They help us
see, in other words, a very different group of volunteers engaged in a
very different fight--one that proved to be the last great campaign of
American anarchism.
Shortly after the war began, French Communist observer Andre Marty
informed the Communist International (Comintern) that in Catalonia "the
machinery of state is either destroyed or paralyzed" and "the anarchists
have under their control, either directly or indirectly, all major
industry and part of the agriculture of this country." One former
Spanish Communist later declared that without collectivization "it would
have been impossible to sustain the war for three months, let alone
three years." [8] These are telling admissions given the Cominternâs
strategy of downplaying and, if possible, reversing the CNTâs revolution
in the hope that Western democracies would then be willing to intervene
and halt the growing threat that fascism posed to the Soviet Union. [9]
Writing in late 1937, disillusioned American Communist Liston Oak, who
had worked for the Republican government in Madrid early in the war,
affirmed the success of the revolution: "The fact that is concealed by
the coalition of the Spanish Communist Party with the left Republicans
and right wing Socialists, is that there has been a successful social
revolution in half of Spain. Successful, that is, in that the
collectivization of factories and farms which are operated under trade
union control, and operated quite efficiently." [10] Most anarchists in
both Spain and the United States viewed the triumph of this revolution
as key to mobilizing sufficient resources and morale to triumph over
Francisco Francoâs Nationalist forces. Perhaps this was wishful
thinking, but it was no more so than the counterrevolutionary strategy
pursued by the anarchistsâ Popular Front rivals, which was destined to
fail in the face of European appeasement and American isolationism. [11]
The Spanish Revolution revitalized a diminished American anarchist
movement. Composed overwhelmingly of immigrants, anarchism in the United
States had reached its heyday in the first decade of the twentieth
century, though in 1933 an estimated 75 anarchist groups were still
scattered across the country. These were largely organized according to
ethnicity or language and lacked any national coordinating structure.
The only significant nationwide organization was the Yiddish-speaking
Jewish Anarchist Federation of the United States and Canada, which
included several hundred members in around a dozen branches. One of the
movementâs few signs of vitality was New Yorkâs Vanguard Group, founded
in 1932 by a number of college-age, American-born children of Jewish and
Italian anarchists. [12] In the first weeks of the war, several of these
organizations--including the Jewish Anarchist Federation, the Vanguard
Group, and the Spanish-speaking Cultura Proletaria Group formed the
United Libertarian Organizations (ULO) to coordinate aid for the CNT.
They were joined by the Marine Transport Workers Union and General
Recruiting Union of what remained of the syndicalist Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW). In August, the ULO founded the newspaper Spanish
Revolution to publicize the CNTâs accomplishments, soon printing 7,000
copies of each issue. [13]
In addition, many anarchists went to Spain to observe developments
firsthand. In October 1936, Andre Marty noted, "anarchists from every
corner of the world are thronging to Barcelona." [14] Reports from these
visitors further enflamed hopes abroad. Louis Frank, an American who in
Barcelona directed the documentary films Fury Over Spain (1937) and The
Will of a People (1938), informed readers of New Yorkâs Vanguard that
"the dream of Bakunin is no longer utopian, no longer a myth; it is a
living reality in Spain." [15] Another American anarchist newspaper
declared, "a great libertarian revolution is in the making; a revolution
breaking with all precedents and charting a new course for humanity...
The Spanish Revolution is rapidly assuming an international scope. Its
battle front is extending to all parts of the world." [16] In the midst
of such breathless reports, it was easy for Americans to overlook the
messy reality on the ground in Spain, which included widespread
extrajuridical killings, the establishment of prison labor camps by the
CNT and other Popular Front parties, material shortcomings and lack of
coordination among the CNTâs collectives, a precarious Popular Front
alliance, and the increasing superiority of Nationalist forces. [17]
Instead, Los Angeles anarchist Morris Nadelman recalled, "We believed
that the anarchists in Spain could not be repressed." [18]
The CNTâs greatest need was arms. Within the first 15 months of the war,
most of Spainâs negligible munitions industry was in Nationalist hands,
and the nonintervention agreement signed by the major European powers
prevented Popular Front forces from purchasing weapons from most
suppliers--despite the fact that signatories Germany and Italy
immediately violated the treaty and supplied the Nationalists with arms,
troops, and advisers. The U.S. government also declared a "moral
embargo" on Spain, and in January 1937 it formally banned arms
shipments, followed by a prohibition on the transportation of any
passengers or articles to Spain. [19] Workers in Barcelona and Madrid
hastily converted hundreds of plants for war production, but the
armaments produced were of mixed quality and insufficient to meet
demand. [20] According to Spanish Revolution, "in Spain there are seven
eager men to one rifle. We must not relax for a moment in our efforts to
collect money and to stir up the public opinion against the infamous
blockade which the would-be democratic governments of France and Britain
have established against the Spanish people." [21]
The final legal shipment of over $2 million worth of armaments departed
the United States onboard the Mar Cantdbrico on 6 January 1937, just
hours before the Neutrality Act went into effect. The ship also carried
five Spanish anarchist immigrants, including Cesar Vega, a longtime
resident of the anarchist colony in Mohegan, New York; Jose Tomas
Fernandez, who had been associated with New Yorkâs Cultura Proletaria
before returning to Spain and then being dispatched back to the United
States "with the mission of obtaining arms and ammunition for the
front"; and Andres Castro, who intended to join an anarchist militia.
[22] However, after taking on more munitions in Mexico, the Mar
Cantdbrico was captured by Francoâs navy off the coast of Spain. The
crew and the five anarchists aboard were executed, but not before Vega
was allowed to write a final farewell to his wife and child; Mohegan
resident Harry Kelly remembered that it was "a brave letter and voiced
no regrets." [23]
Although anarchists condemned American neutrality, they never mounted a
significant campaign to rescind the embargo, lacking the resources to do
so. Instead, they used their transnational connections to circumvent the
embargo by directly supplying arms and funds to Spanish comrades. An
early effort was undertaken by sailor Bruno Bonturi, who had migrated to
America with his mother in 1914 at the age of 12. After returning to
Italy in 1922, Bonturi shuttled back and forth between the United
States, Italy, and Spain. He joined New Yorkâs Vanguard Group and then
sailed for Spain in July 1936, arriving immediately following the
Nationalist uprising. After briefly serving with an anarchist militia
near Granada, he was dispatched by the CNT to the border town of Portbou
to help supervise the entry of foreign volunteers. [24] British reporter
Keith Scott Watson met Bonturi in Spain and recorded the anarchistâs
thick Italian American accent: "I was in de wobblies [i.e., the IWW] in
de American seamenâs union. I seen every longshore strike on the
Atlantic coast. Cops knew me O.K., they ran me out just before de bust
up here." Bonturi also lamented, "Christ, we got no guns; canât fight
this war with bows and arrers [sic]. De Fascists got guns O.K., getting
âem all the time from Hitler and Mussolini and de Portuguese bastards."
[25] Bonturi subsequently returned to New York to procure arms for the
CNT, making contact with his comrades in the Vanguard Group. However,
according to member Clara Freedman Solomon, due to the embargo his
mission "turned out to be a plan in futility." Bonturi departed in April
1937, smuggling only a small quantity of weapons purchased by the
cash-strapped Vanguard Group. [26]
Yet Vanguard members may have played a more active role in running arms
then they later admitted; Joseph J. Cohen, former editor of the Yiddish
anarchist paper Fraye Arbeter Shtime, recalled, "Younger comrades
journeyed to help in the struggle, with material not obtainable in Spain
through the âNon-Interventionâ blockade." [27] According to one former
Vanguard Group member, famed anarchist labor agitator Carlo Tresca, who
maintained close ties to the group, "had people coming over on the ships
from France and other places" to smuggle weapons into Spain. [28]
Meanwhile, members of the anarchist colony at Stelton, New Jersey,
established a fund to purchase an airplane for the CNT in memory of
legendary Spanish anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, though it is unclear
if they succeeded. [29] The ULO and other anarchist organizations also
collected money to send directly to CNT representatives in France and
formed at least eight branches of Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista
(International Antifascist Solidarity), an international anarchist
initiative to raise humanitarian aid for Spain; together these groups
collected a combined sum of over $100,000 during the war. [30] Yet such
aid fell woefully short of wartime needs, and the Popular Front
desperately turned to the Soviet Union, which covertly began arms sales
in return for the Spanish governmentâs gold reserves.
For many, giving material support to Spain was not enough. The first
foreign anarchists arrived in Barcelona within days of the Nationalist
uprising. These were French antifascists and Italian exiles belonging to
the organization Giustizia e Liberta' (Justice and Liberty), founded in
Paris by socialist intellectual Carlo Roselli. On 17 August 1936,
Roselli and prominent Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri, who was living
in Barcelona when the war began, organized the volunteers into the
Italian Section of the CNTâs Ascaso Column. Of the original 130 members,
80 were anarchists, and within a few months, anarchists made up 250 of
the unitâs approximately 300 members. [31] The initial group included
57-year-old Michele Centrone, who had been an active anarchist in San
Francisco for more than a decade before his deportation in 1920. The
Italian Section undertook its first military engagement early on the
morning of 28 August 1936, attacking a fascist position at Monte Pelado
in Aragon. Centrone was the first to fall when "a rifle bullet smashed
his forehead," but the offensive succeeded after five hours of fighting.
[32] Shockingly little has been written about the hundreds of foreign
anarchists who, like Centrone, fought in Spain. Historians of the
International Brigades estimate that there were "only a few hundred" who
fought in the CNTâs militias, while Lincoln Battalion historian Peter
Carroll mentions a handful of individual Americans who served in Spanish
militias, noting in passing that "a few Italian-American anarchists also
fought for the Spanish Republic"--a gross underestimation as well as a
misreading of the anarchistsâ motives. [33] As a eulogy penned by a
fellow Ascaso Column member noted, Michele Centrone had not died in
defense of the Spanish Republic or for the redemption of Italy but "had
gone to Spain to fight for the Social Revolution." [34]
As late as September 1938, the Republican government counted 1,946
foreign-born fighters enlisted in units outside of the International
Brigades. There was, in fact, a "seeming ubiquity of... foreign elements
in the ranks of the Spanish militias." [35] The number who served over
the entire course of the war may be as high as 5,000, although Augustin
Souchy, a prominent German-born CNT member, believed the total "did not
exceed 3,000." [36] Regardless, at least 1,600 to 2,000 foreign
anarchists fought in Spain, most of them in the ranks of the CNTâs
militias. These included 500 to 1,000 Italians, at least 250 to 300
Frenchmen, 230 to 250 Germans, and another 100 or more volunteers from
elsewhere in Europe, as well as at least one Chinese anarchist. [37]
Several hundred Latin American anarchists also participated. [38] In
addition, more than 100 anarchists traveled from the United States to
take up arms. Although some took advantage of the logistical support
provided by the organizers of the International Brigades, most availed
themselves to preexisting transatlantic anarchist networks constructed
over previous decades through migration, exile, correspondence,
publications, and international collaboration. [39] As an anarchist
source later noted, these volunteers "made their way to Spain in
silence, by their own means or with the aid of comrades. Their names are
not always famous, and they could not make themselves known without also
exposing themselves to reprisals." [40]
The total number of foreign anarchists who enlisted in Spain was less
than one-tenth the size of the International Brigades. This reflects not
only the relative strength of communism during the Popular Front period
but also the greater obstacles facing anarchists. The Comintern
coordinated an international recruiting effort organized and financed by
national Communist parties, whereas the anarcho-syndicalist
International Working Menâs Association (IWMA), to which the CNT
belonged, managed to recruit just two foreign centurias (units of
approximately 100 soldiers), who served with the anarchist 26th Division
on the Aragon front, and financed an additional two centurias "drawn
from youth groups." [41] Most anarchists, however, had to find their way
without such support. Moreover, few anarchists traveled to Spain after
the "May Days" of 1937; the International Brigades, by contrast,
received volunteers for a period nearly twice as long. In September
1936, CNT representatives in the Anti-Fascist Militias Committee, the de
facto ruling body of Catalonia, also explicitly discouraged foreign
anarchists from coming to Spain. The militias lacked weapons, not
soldiers, they argued, and support from abroad would be better directed
toward raising funds and working to end Western neutrality. Yet CNT
spokesman Diego Abad de Santillan said of those who came regardless, "We
could not deny their desire to fight and die with us." [42] The
exception to the CNTâs position was an unsuccessful effort to recruit
foreign anarchist pilots for the Popular Front air force, which was
controlled by Soviet advisers who excluded CNT members and often refused
air support to anarchist units. In response to an appeal from the CNT,
more than a dozen Spanish and Italian anarchists in New York state
secretly began flight training in the winter of 1937. The dire military
situation, however, prompted half the aspiring pilots to leave for Spain
before their training was complete. [43]
This group was representative of the American contingent in Spain as a
whole, which was composed mainly of Italian and Spanish immigrants, many
of whom had resided in the United States for decades. Unfortunately,
precise details about most of these volunteers are scarce. Scant records
exist of foreigners who served outside of the International Brigades,
and most anarchists sought to remain anonymous to avoid potential
charges under the Neutrality Act or to prevent being barred from reentry
to the United States. My research has identified 37 by name, and sources
indicate that they belonged to a larger group of some 100 to 200
volunteers.
Approximately 50 Italian American anarchists undertook the journey to
Spain, evenly divided between longtime American residents and recent
antifascist refugees. [44] Among the latter were Giuseppe Esposito, a
participant in the factory takeovers of Italyâs biennio rosso (1919 to
1920) who fled to America in 1925; Domenico Rosati, a miner formerly
active in Italyâs paramilitary antifascist organization Arditi del
Popolo; Croatian-born Italian sailor Giuseppe Paliaga, who jumped ship
in New York in 1929; and Patrizio ("Comunardo") Borghi, son of exiled
anarchosyndicalist Armando Borghi, who joined his father in the United
States in 1932. [45]
Details about Spanish return migrants are sketchier. Historian James A.
Baer notes, "The anarchist revolution that began in reaction to the
military uprising by General Francisco Franco brought many Spaniards
home from abroad." Italian-born anarchist Valerio Isca recalled that the
Cultura Proletaria Group "was the largest in New York, containing maybe
two hundred members, some of whom went back to Spain during the Civil
War." [46] But these returning Spaniards served in regular Spanish
units, making them difficult to identify in the documentary record. Only
when they met tragic ends, like the unfortunates onboard the Mar
Cantabrico, did their names appear in the anarchist press. If we assume
that those who died represented only a fraction of those who returned,
then the total must have been at least several dozen. One, who signed a
letter to Cultura Proletaria with the initials J.P.G., served in the
CNTâs famed Durruti Column. [47] The remaining volunteers included
perhaps two dozen native-born Americans, many of them members of the
IWW, as well as Irish-born IWW member Patrick Read. [48]
Not included in these numbers are those Italians and Spaniards who
previously lived in the United States but had, like Michele Centrone,
returned to Europe before the outbreak of the war. For example, Ilario
Margarita, the former editor of New Yorkâs Italian-language LâAdunata
dei Refrattari (Call of the Refractaries), left the United States in
1932 and joined the Ascaso Column in Spain. [49] Spaniard Alvaro Gil,
who became an anarchist in New York and was the former secretary of
Cultura Proletaria, repatriated after the declaration of the Second
Republic in 1931, fought against the Nationalist uprising in the streets
of Madrid, and became a commander in the Republican Armyâs 70th
Division. [50] Gilâs close friend, sailor Claro J. Sendon Lamela, had
likewise lived in New York and written for Cultura Proletaria before
returning to Galicia in 1932 and becoming a prominent member of the
CNTâs National Committee. During the war, he returned to the United
States to raise support for the CNT but succumbed to chronic respiratory
problems and died in New York on 1 December 1937. [51]
In some respects, American anarchist volunteers resembled the Communists
and fellow travelers of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Maritime workers
predominated in both groups, accounting for more than 40 percent of
anarchists whose occupations are known. This should not be surprising,
as anarchism and syndicalism persisted among American seamen and
dockworkers well into the 1930s, and maritime workers had familiarity
with and access to transatlantic transportation. [52] Another ten
percent of anarchists were miners (three times the proportion among the
Lincolns), and an equal number were unskilled laborers. Most of the
remainder were independent skilled workers including a barber, an
engraver, an electrician, two journalists, a goldsmith, and a baker--in
addition to a single shopkeeper. Many of these occupations required
frequent travel or were subject to high levels of instability, making
most of these volunteers what International Brigades historian Michael
Jackson calls "marginal men": migratory workers, independent craftsmen,
and political exiles, often unmarried, who were "available for
recruitment." [53]
The preponderance of immigrants among the anarchists, however, stands in
sharp contrast to the Lincoln Battalion. Only about one in ten of the
anarchists were American born, compared to 60 to 70 percent of the
Lincolns. [54] Fewer than ten percent of Lincolns were from Italian
backgrounds, and virtually none were Spaniards. Conversely, 25 to 46
percent of Lincoln Battalion volunteers were Jewish, most of them
American-born children of Eastern European immigrants. [55] By contrast,
Americaâs largely immigrant Jewish anarchist movement was advanced in
age and far less militant than its Italian and Spanish counterparts, and
it included few members prepared to kill or be killed in Spain. These
disparities illustrate not only the immigrant character of American
anarchism but also communismâs greater success in attracting younger
radicals. The average anarchist volunteer was in his mid- to late
thirties, whereas only about a third of Lincoln Battalion volunteers
were over 29. Several anarchists were in their 50s, and only one,
19-year-old Douglas Clark Stearns, was under 20. Nearly 18 percent of
Lincolns, by contrast, were college students. [56] Moreover, once in
Spain, the experiences of anarchist volunteers diverged significantly
from those of Communists and fellow travelers.
Many anarchists arrived in Spain months before the International
Brigades appeared. Most of these early militiamen were Italian Americans
who joined the Ascaso Column, including Bruno Bonturi and Domenico
Rosati. Others joined the International Group of the Durruti Column, a
unit composed of some 250 to 400 foreign anarchists. [57] Its roster
included an American named John Girney, born in 1893, and Italian
American anarchist Giuseppe Paliaga, who probably took part in the
defense of Madrid in November 1936, where the International Group lost
three-quarters of its members and Buenaventura Durruti was killed. [58]
(The International Group also included a Sacco and Vanzetti Centuria,
but despite frequent claims to the contrary, this unit was not composed
of Americans.)59
Sailor Justus Kates fought with an unidentified anarchist militia on the
Huesca front, and Vanguard Group member Gilbert Connolly, a metalworker
who claimed Irish revolutionary James Connolly as a relative, also
served in an unknown unit. [59] More unusual was the experience of
American-born Douglas Clark Stearns, who was attending preparatory
school in England when the war broke out and joined a group recruited by
the Independent Labor Party. These volunteers fought on the Aragon front
with the 29th Division of the anti-Stalinist Partido Obrero de
Unificaci6n Marxista (Workersâ Party of Marxist Unification, or POUM) in
the same unit as writer George Orwell. However, Stearns soon transferred
into the Batallon de la Muerte (Battalion of Death), a mostly Italian
unit within the Ascaso Column, and survived its annihilation on the
Huesca front in June 1937. [60] (The disastrous fate of the Batallon de
la Muerte was likely premeditated; its founder and commander, Candido
Testa, was actually an informant for Mussoliniâs secret police.)62
At least five anarchists joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, including
Italian sailor Guerrino Fonda, who departed New York with the first
group of Lincoln volunteers on 26 December 1936. [61] The other known
Lincoln Battalion anarchists belonged to the IWW: Marine Transport
Workers members Virgil Morris, Harry Owens, and Raymond Elvis Ticer and
37-year-old Irishman Patrick Read. [62] Read was a veteran of both the
First World War and the Irish War of Independence and in the United
States had become a committed anarchist. He initially traveled to Spain
as a volunteer for the Eugene V. Debs Column, a Socialist Party attempt
to form a non-communist alternative to the International Brigades that
was endorsed by Carlo Tresca, among others. However, only about 25 of
the original 200 recruits ever made it to Spain, where most of them,
like Read, joined the International Brigades after the Debs Column
failed to materialize. [63] Read was first attached to a French section,
but his political views got him into trouble and he was transferred into
the Lincoln Battalion, where he became head of the transmissions unit
and was renowned for his courage. Harry Fischer thought Read was
"probably the best soldier in the battalion," and battalion commander
Lenny Lamb recalled, "The anarchists I knew were incredibly
courageous... [Read] would argue with anybody that was willing to argue
with him, which I wasnât, but in his actions he was brave and
wonderfully generous and very, very likable. He never seemed to fear
death, or at least he didnât show it." [64]
Other anarchists tried to sign up for the Lincoln Battalion but were
turned away. Enrico Arrigoni set out to join it but "smelled the stink
of totalitarian communism under their democratic cover" and changed his
mind, later traveling to Spain as a reporter for the American anarchist
press. [65] Many Italian American anarchists, however, did join the
Italian-language Garibaldi Battalion, which under the leadership of
Republican antifascist Randolfo Pacciardi was the most politically
tolerant section of the International Brigades. In addition, Giuseppe
Esposito, a sailor and individualist anarchist who fled to the United
States in 1925, served in a medical unit of the International Brigades.
[66] Some of these men took part in the defense of Madrid, where the
International Brigades are credited with turning the tide of battle, and
most participated in the Battle of Guadalajara in March 1937, where the
Garibaldi Battalion played a decisive role in defeating Italian troops
supplied by Mussolini. [67] In the fall of 1938, the Garibaldi Battalion
also fought in the Battle of the Ebro, for which Italian American
anarchist Alvaro Ghiara was decorated for bravery. [68]
An estimated 1,000 women fought in Popular Front militias as well,
despite government prohibitions. [69] The international anarchist press
largely ignored the role of women on the battlefield, but a number of
female anarchists joined the International Group of the Durruti Column,
and at least ten Italian anarchist women fought in Spain. [70] Italian
American anarchist Maria Giaconi appears to have been one of those to
break this gender barrier. Giaconi migrated from central Italy to join a
brother in Jessup, Pennsylvania, in 1912 and was soon active in the
local Italian anarchist community. She became a noted radical speaker
and corresponded with such anarchist luminaries as Errico Malatesta and
Camillo Berneri. After the outbreak of the war, she abruptly
disappeared, eluding federal agents and private detectives monitoring
her activities. Then, in October 1936, Italian authorities received word
from "confidential sources" that Giaconi had gone to Spain and joined "a
fighting detachment against General Francoâs uprising." In March 1937,
she reappeared in New York, living "with a daughter married to a
sailor"--a maritime connection that could have provided her with passage
to and from Spain, where her relationship with Berneri would have
facilitated entry into an Italian militia section. [71] If she did fight
in Spain, Giaconi was the only American woman of any political
persuasion known to have done so.
Other women took up more traditional roles. David Koven recalled that
several Jewish anarchist women he had known in New York "took themselves
to Spain when the anti-fascist struggle broke out in 1936 and worked as
nurses in the field hospitals set up by the revolutionary forces."
Little additional information is available, but these women helped meet
what was an arguably more critical need than that filled by foreign-born
soldiers. Moreover, "many women who served in the front lines primarily
as nurses were also armed and undertook limited combat duties." [72]
Historians have not treated the anarchistsâ militias kindly. They
usually portray these units as comically incompetent, disorganized,
unwilling to fight, and "in general... of little military value." [73]
Without question, the improvised militias lacked military experience and
training, and on the battlefield were inferior to a professional army.
Some also refused orders to advance into dangerous positions. Italian
American volunteer Carl Marzani, a socialist and later Communist who
joined the Durruti Column (but was not placed in its International
Group), was "dismayed to see the total disorganization. There were
discussions and polemics and arguments and pamphlets being distributed
defending all sides. But it seems to me there was no military training,
no preparation whatsoever." [74] Yet volunteer militiamen and women were
all that stood between Franco and victory for more than a year. George
Orwell observed: "The journalists who sneered at the militia-system
seldom remembered that the militias had to hold the line while the
Popular Army was training in the rear. And it is a tribute to the
strength of ârevolutionaryâ discipline that the militias stayed in the
field at all. For until about June 1937 there was nothing to keep them,
except class loyalty." [75] Within days of the Nationalist uprising,
moreover, anarchist-led militias marched from Barcelona into Aragon and
reconquered half that region in what was to be the Popular Frontâs most
successful offensive of the entire war--despite the fact that the
fighting in Aragon was "a war without artillery, without plans, without
reconnaissance, without definable fronts." [76]
Furthermore, the structure of the CNTâs militias "reflected the ideals
of equality, individual liberty, and freedom from obligatory
discipline... There was no officersâ hierarchy, no saluting, no
regimentation." Each ten-person section elected its own corporal, each
centuria elected its own delegate, and assemblies of these delegates
collectively made decisions--though once engaged in battle, militia
members were expected to obey the orders of their elected commanders.
[77] These units were thus organized "on the organic principles of
self-management and self-organization," attempting, as Orwell observed,
"to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the
classless society." [78] This prefigurative model of revolution, based
on the principle that means must coincide with ends, was a central
feature that differentiated anarchism from Marxism and was precisely
what most foreign anarchists sought out in Spain. According to historian
Anthony Beevor, "Much has been made of the fact that leaders were
elected and political groupings maintained in the militias. But this was
not so much a difficulty as a source of strength." [79]
Nevertheless, lack of coordination between the militias of different
political factions was a serious problem. By September 1936, some CNT
leaders and militia commanders were calling for a centralized command
structure and greater military discipline. [80] Other anarchists,
however, strongly resisted the transformation of the militias to a
regular army, a change decreed by the Republican government in October
1936 and largely implemented by June of the following year. Foreign
volunteers were among the most intransigently opposed to militarization.
The Italian section of the Ascaso Column declared "with the requisite
absolute clarity that, in the event of the authoritiesâ deeming us
liable to implementation of [militarization], we could not but regard
ourselves as released from any moral obligation and invoke our complete
freedom of action." [81] They clashed with CNT leaders over this issue,
revealing, in one Italian section memberâs view, "deep seated doctrinal
differences and glaring psychological contrasts between the Italian
anarchists and their Spanish colleagues." But with the Republican
government refusing to deliver supplies to those who resisted, the
outcome was a forgone conclusion, and the Ascaso Column was incorporated
into the new Republican Armyâs 28th Division. [82]
Michael Alpert dismissed the efficacy of the militias by observing that
"an army is victorious because it is stronger than its adversary in
commanders, numbers and quality, or because it handles its resources
better than the enemy... The Republican militias were neither of these
two kinds of army." [83] But the Republican Army that replaced the
militias was also neither of these; it attempted to carry out
conventional warfare against an enemy that possessed superior troops,
resources, and commanders, with predictable results. [84]
Militarization and asymmetrical warfare were not the only dilemmas
anarchists faced. In September 1936, representatives of the CNT entered
into the Popular Front government of Catalonia, and in November the
anarchists also joined the national government in Madrid. This decision
generated intense debate within the international anarchist movement,
but the CNT justified its abandonment of anarchist principles on the
grounds that the organization was not strong enough to simultaneously
fight against both Franco and the various parties of the Popular Front,
and that so long as there was to be a government, CNT representatives
could stymie its efforts to curb their revolution. The anarchists also
hoped their collaboration would secure adequate materiel for their
militias. [85]
Soviet sources corroborate anarchist claims that it was lack of
armaments, not lack of discipline or will to fight, that prevented the
Durruti Column from marching on the Aragonese capital of Zaragoza in the
first days of the war before Nationalist reinforcements could arrive.
Military attache Iosif Ratner found that Durrutiâs forces had only 30
cartridges per rifle by the time they reached the outskirts of the
capital; he believed Durruti was "absolutely right" when he said that if
the Republican government supplied his troops with sufficient ammunition
(which was not forthcoming), "they could take Huesca without difficulty"
and then move on to Zaragoza. Soviet journalist Ilya Ehrenburg noted
that on the Aragon front there were "volunteers but no guns." [86] With
their counteroffensive stalled, the 30,000 anarchist troops on the
Aragon front endured more than a year of inaction in the trenches. [87]
Italians in the Ascaso Column were "living amid rats, hardships and
lice, careless of the sores afflicting their bodies (often the products
of dysentery, blood poisoning and other commonplace trench ailments)."
In early 1937 one of these Italians complained, "My battalion cannot
stand this stagnation any longer. We foreign anarchists came here to
fight and not to rot in trenches." [88] Outraged at the abrogation of
the militia structure, exasperated by "the damned inactivity...
contrived by the central government and the Bolsheviks," and stung by
the "rather dismal opinion of the Italian volunteers" held by Spanish
anarchists, most of the 200 Italians in the Ascaso Column left the front
in April 1937--but only after agreeing to participate in a final
offensive at Carascal, where 9 of their number were killed and 43 were
wounded. Enrico Arrigoni, who visited what remained of the brigade at
the end of that month, reported, "most of them had returned to Barcelona
a few days ago, upset by the forced inactivity in which they have
remained for many months." In Barcelona, this group began working with
Camillo Berneri to organize a new, independent anarchist battalion to
return to Aragon. [89]
The lack of arms at the front resulted from both insufficient munitions
production capacity in Barcelona and the withholding of Russian-supplied
arms--themselves of questionable quality--by the government. Arrigoni
believed this was "because the government doesnât want the anarchists to
win victories." [90] Spanish and Soviet Communists, meanwhile,
complained of anarchistsâ unwillingness to launch attacks. [91] As
Beevor noted, "The Communists made sure that none of the new equipment
went to the Aragon front, certainly no aircraft or tanks, which were
reserved for their own troops... Under such conditions it was
unrealistic to expect conventional offensives to be mounted." [92] In
other words, anarchists on the Aragon front were unwilling to launch a
major offensive, but only because the Catalan and national governments
were consciously refusing to arm them; these government suspicions were
logical, however, because the anarchists did intend, sooner or later, to
use those arms to push their revolution forward. The incompatible goals
of the Popular Front coalition led to a stalemate based on well-founded,
mutual distrust.
In October 1936, Andre Marty, now commissar of the International
Brigades, cautioned the Comintern "to fight with [the anarchists] in the
face of fascism--this [would be] the end... after the victory we will
get even with them, all the more so since at that point we will have a
strong army." [93] Similarly, in a letter probably written in early
1937, anarchist Anna Sosnovsky confided to a friend, "The situation of
our movement in Spain is not in the best of shape, [and] a secret call
has been issued for comrades to come over and help them in the
anticipated fight with the Marxists after the fascists are defeated."
[94] The source of this "secret call" was almost certainly discontented
Italians in Spain. Anarchists and Communists were preparing for an
inevitable postwar struggle at the expense of a united effort against
Franco. However, this infighting would not stay contained until after
the war.
By early 1937, the growing Spanish Communist Party was looking to
"hasten... and if necessary, to provoke" a crisis with the anarchists.
On 3 May 1937, Barcelonaâs Communist chief of police dispatched officers
to evict CNT members from the cityâs Telephone Exchange, as part of an
ongoing effort by the Catalan government to dislodge anarchists from
strategic positions. [95] Workers resisted, and shots were exchanged.
The fighting quickly spilled into the streets, where anarchist defense
committees and members of the POUM erected makeshift barricades to
battle police and Communist troops. Sporadic violence consumed the city
for five days. [96]
The Italians who had left the Ascaso Column arrived in Barcelona on the
eve of the fighting, and during the May Days they manned the barricades
alongside their Spanish comrades "to defend the revolution." Among them
was Armando Vecchietti, one of the would-be pilots from New York, who
was known as "Amerigo" or "Americo" because of his years in the United
States. Many of the Italians opposed CNT leadersâ calls to end the
unrest and were "against the letting slip of this chance to deal a
decisive blow to put paid to the counter-revolutionary provocations and
maneuvers" of the Communists and their allies. [97] The Garibaldi
Battalion was ordered to Barcelona to suppress the anarchists during the
fighting, but Randolfo Pacciardi instructed acting commander Carlo
Penchianati to refuse; as a result, "among the Italian Anarchists in his
brigade, Pacciardiâs popularity, which was high to begin with, was now
even greater." [98]
By the time the CNT negotiated a ceasefire, at least 400 people were
dead, 1,000 wounded, and thousands imprisoned. Italian anarchists were
especially dismayed to learn that Camillo Berneri and his associate
Francesco Barbieri had been assassinated in Barcelona on 5 May 1937, an
act immediately attributed to Communists. [99] The Catalan government,
which viewed the fighting as a threat to the republicâs ability to
sustain the war, falsely claimed that the May Days had been an attempt
by the POUM and its anarchist allies to seize power. In the aftermath,
the POUM was outlawed, the CNT was forced out of the Catalan and
national governments, and the Communist Partyâs power increased. In
Barcelona, George Orwell discovered that "there was a peculiar evil
feeling in the air--an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, uncertainty, and
veiled hatred." [100]
A wave of armed repression followed, and Communist troops forcibly
dissolved several agricultural collectives, ending all hopes of
expanding the anarchistsâ revolution. According to Beevor, "as a result
of communist power the repression of dissenters was far greater than it
had been during Primo de Riveraâs dictatorship." [101] Foreigners as
well as Spaniards were caught in this crackdown. Enrico Arrigoni was
arrested in October 1937 after confronting police who were firing on CNT
members being evicted from a building. Imprisoned without charges for
two months, he was released only after the American consul intervened on
his behalf. [102] That November, CNT activist Bruno Bonturi was arrested
on the pretext of violating an expulsion order from 1934, issued by the
right-wing government that had been swept out of power in 1936. [103]
The International Brigades also attempted to impose ideological
discipline, although enforcement varied according to commander. [104]
Members of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion were informed by Communist
Party official (and erstwhile anarchist) Robert Minor that the May Days
had been "started by the Trotskyite POUM, and the âuncontrollablesâ
among the Anarchists, under the direction of Francoâs fifth column and
Italian and Nazi secret agents." Most battalion members therefore
"despised the anarchists and considered them virtual enemies of the
Republic." [105] IWW member Virgil Morris, who was vocally critical of
the battalionâs Communist commanders, was repeatedly disciplined,
imprisoned for attempting to desert, and suspected of being a spy. [106]
Patrick Read, despite his stellar service record, was eventually ejected
from the Lincoln Battalion for "always talking against the Communist
Party." [107] One Lincoln volunteer was even slated for execution after
he began attending anarchist meetings and spreading anti-communist ideas
within the unit; however, a blizzard intervened and the unsuspecting
soldier was repatriated due to severe frostbite. [108] Deserter Albert
Wallach made contact with the CNT and tried to stow away onboard the SS
Oregon, but he was discovered, arrested, and allegedly executed by
another Lincoln Battalion member. [109] IWW sailor Lloyd Usinger, an
anarchist who had run the naval blockade as part of the crew of the
Oregon, spent several weeks in Barcelona working with the CNT and helped
to hide Wallach an act for which he, too, was arrested and threatened
with execution before his captain secured his release. [110]
Rumors reached anarchists in the United States about additional "men,
officers as well as privates," who "were deliberately killed by the I.B.
administration because of their independent attitude." According to
accounts of an incident in April 1938 that appeared in both anarchist
and IWW publications, three IWW members in the Lincoln Battalion,
including Ivan Silverman and anarchist Harry Owens, were killed by enemy
fire after being intentionally ordered into an exposed position. These
men may, however, simply have fallen victim to what one historian has
called the "lethal incompetence demonstrated by brigade high command."
[111] On the other hand, IWW member Raymond Elvis Ticer, who "hated
communists" and was a veteran of anticommunist fights on San Franciscoâs
waterfront, was promoted within the Lincoln Battalion and, according to
one volunteer under his command, "made a great sergeant in Spain," where
he was wounded at Quinto. [112]
Meanwhile, demoralization and desperation plagued foreigners in CNT
units. In June 1937, an Italian member of the militarized Ascaso
Division wrote to LâAdunata dei Refrattari, "Soon others will leave,
including some of those who came from America." [113] But many were
unwilling to give up the fight and joined the new Italian division
within the CNTâs 25th Division or the International Shock Battalion of
the 26th Division (the former Durruti Column), the unit Berneri began to
organize before his murder. The Shock Battalion--which included Italian
American anarchist Armando Vecchietti--fought on the Aragon front near
Teruel, where Vecchietti was killed in action in mid-June 1937. [114]
According to Shock Battalion volunteer and Canadian IWW member Bill
Wood, "The government sabotaged us since we were formed in May and made
it impossible for us to stay at the front... Our arms were rotten, even
though the Valencia government has plenty of arms and planes. They know
enough not to give arms to the thousands of anarchists on the Aragon
front. We could have driven the fascists out of Huesca and Saragossa had
we had the aid of the aviation." [115]
In November 1938, a group of Italians who had quit the Aragon front,
including Italian American anarchist Armando Rodriguez, founded an
orphanage outside of Barcelona to house the warâs increasing number of
parentless children. The Colonia "LâAdunata dei Refrattari," named for
and funded through the American publication of the same name, operated
for only two months before Barcelona fell to the Nationalists. [116]
Most of the foreign anarchists who had remained in Spain ended up as
orphans of a different sort, corralled into French refugee camps, which
were transformed into concentration camps after Germany occupied France
in 1940. Italian American anarchists Pietro Deiana, Guerrino Fonda,
Alvaro Ghiara, Benedetto Mori, Domenico Rosati, and Armando Rodriguez
were all interned by the Vichy regime. Deiana, Ghiara, and Rodriguez
were transferred to Nazi camps in Eastern Europe, but all three survived
until the end of the war, and Deiana eventually made his way back to the
United States. [117] Many others never returned.
Most anarchist volunteers were not American citizens and could therefore
be excluded by immigration officials as alien anarchists. Enrico
Albertini, one of the many Italian-born veterans who was refused
reentry, ultimately took refuge in Cuba. Bruno Bonturi and Pietro Fusari
were likewise detained at Ellis Island in early 1939; Bonturi, who had
lived in the United States for so long that he was nicknamed
"lâamericano," eventually departed for Chile and later petitioned
Mussoliniâs regime to allow him to rejoin his wife and child in Italy.
[118] Guerrino Fonda escaped internment in France only to be held at
Ellis Island for six months after arriving as a stowaway in June 1939
before finally departing for Argentina. [119]
A few, however, were aided by "a transnational network... established by
Italian anarchists to aid comrades who needed to leave Europe for North
America" at the end of the war. Based out of Belgium, this network
provided refugees with Cuban passports that were used for travel to
Canada, from whence their carriers either sneaked across the U.S.-Canada
border or presented their false documents to immigration authorities and
claimed to be passing through the United States on their way back to
Cuba. In 1938, Carlo Tresca also helped smuggle Virgilio Gozzoli, who
had collaborated on Camillo Berneriâs paper Guerra di Classe in
Barcelona, to New York. [120] But physical escape did not necessarily
free veterans from the trauma of the Spanish battlefield. Batallon de la
Muerte survivor Douglas Clark Stearns spoke at numerous fund-raising
events for the CNT after his return to New York in 1937, but, according
to Vanguard Group member Sam Dolgoff, he "was a very unhappy and
frustrated young man... and he was beset by other anxieties. We were
shocked when informed that he had committed suicide by jumping off the
ship where he was employed as an able-bodied seaman." [121]
The struggles and fates of these volunteers--both the miraculous and the
grisly--do not fit within the narrative of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion
and "the good fight," or within the counternarrative purveyed by
anti-communist critics. Historians of the Spanish Civil War are only
just beginning to move beyond stories of Comintern-organized
international solidarity and Machiavellian international maneuvering to
uncover the bottom-up transnational networks also at work in the
conflict. [122] Far more than just a domestic conflict, more even than
an international stage upon which the Soviet Union and other great
powers vied for position, the Spanish Civil War was also the
revolutionary culmination of decades of transnational anarchist
struggle. American anarchists lost their lives defending this
revolutionary project, and in its aftermath more were lost to exile,
imprisonment, concentration camps, and suicide. The anarchist movement
itself barely survived the fall of Spain, which, according to Sam
Dolgoff, "disastrously undermined not only the morale of the readers [of
Vanguard] but the morale of the members of the Vanguard Group itself."
[123] Vanguard, along with six other American anarchist newspapers, had
disappeared by the end of 1940, and only a few scattered individuals and
groups carried anarchist ideas through the postwar decades. [124] For
these and subsequent generations of anarchists, the brief-lived
achievements of the Spanish Revolution remained among the most
compelling evidence of the practicability of their ideals, but
Americansâ contributions to that revolution were forgotten. Recalling
them opens up "the good fight" to new, more complex interpretations and
highlights the transnational ties that linked the revolutionary Left in
Spain to its counterpart in the United States.
[1] Maximilian[o] Olay, "Spainâs Swing to the Left," in Recovery through
Revolution, ed. Samuel D. Schmalhausen (New York: Covici Friede, 1933),
108, 127--28.
[2] Antonio Bar, "The CNT: The Glory and Tragedy of Spanish
Anarchosyndicalism," in Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International
Perspective, ed. Wayne Thorpe and Marcel van der Linden (Aldershot,
England: Scolar Press, 1990), 119--38; Juan G6mez Casas, Anarchist
Organisation: The History of the F.A.I. (Toronto: Black Rose Books,
1986); and Stuart Christie, We, the Anarchists! A Study of the Iberian
Anarchist Federation (FAI), 1927--1937 (Hastings, England: Meltzer
Press, 2000).
[3] Robert J. Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War
(London: Janus, 1998), 1:128--31; Pelai Pages i Blanch, "The Military
Uprising and the Failure of the Rebellion," in War and Revolution in
Catalonia, 1936--1939, trans. Patrick L. Gallagher (Leiden: Brill,
2013), 20--31; and Agustin Guillam6n, Ready for Revolution: The CNT
Defense Committees in Barcelona, 1933--1938, trans. Paul Sharkey
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014), 70.
[4] Alexander, Anarchists, vol. 1; Antoni Castells Duran, "Revolution
and Collectivization in Civil War Barcelona, 1936--9," in Red Barcelona:
Social Protest and Labour Mobilization in the Twentieth Century, ed.
Angel Smith (London: Routledge, 2003), 127--41; Pages i Blanch, War and
Revolution; and Frank Mintz, Anarchism and Workersâ Self-Management in
Revolutionary Spain, trans. Paul Sharkey (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2013).
[5] George Esenwein, "Freedom Fighters or Comintern Soldiers? Writing
about the âGood Fightâ During the Spanish Civil War," Civil Wars 12, no.
1--2 (2010): 156--66.
[6] Noam Chomsky, "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship," in The Chomsky
Reader, ed. James Peck (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 102.
[7] Robert A. Rosenstone, Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in
the Spanish Civil War (New York: Pegasus, 1969), 268; and Peter N.
Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the
Spanish Civil War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 74.
The Abraham Lincoln Battalion is commonly mislabeled a "Brigade," a unit
composed of several battalions.
[8] Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov, eds., Spain
Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2001), 42, 45, 48; and Ronald Fraser, Blood of Spain:
An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War (New York: Pantheon Books,
1979), 325.
[9] David T. Cattell, Communism and the Spanish Civil War (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1955); and Geoffrey Roberts, "Soviet
Foreign Policy and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939," in Spain in an
International Context, 1936--1959, ed. Christian Leitz and David Joseph
Dunthorn (New York: Berghahn, 1999), 81--103. For a more sinister
interpretation of Soviet motives, see Radosh, Habeck, and Sevostianov,
Spain Betrayed; and Stanley Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet
Union, and Communism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
[10] Socialist Review (New York), September 1937.
[11] Michael Alpert, A New International History of the Spanish Civil
War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and Dominic Tierney, FDR and
the Spanish Civil War: Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle That
Divided America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
[12] Kenyon Zimmer, "Revolution and Repression: From Red Dawn to Red
Scare" and "âNo Right to Exist Anywhere on This Earthâ: Anarchism in
Crisis," in Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism
in America (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 136--205.
[13] Sam Dolgoff, Fragments: AMemoir (Cambridge: Refract Publications,
1986), 19.
[14] Radosh, Habeck, and Sevostianov, Spain Betrayed, 48.
[15] Vanguard, February--March 1937.
[16] Spanish Revolution, 6 November 1936. Emphasis in original.
[17] See, for example, Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition
and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (New York: W. W. Norton,
2013); Julius Ruiz, The "Red Terror" and the Spanish Civil War:
Revolutionary Violence in Madrid (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2014); Michael Seidman, Workers against Work: Labor in Paris and
Barcelona during the Popular Fronts (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991); Michael Seidman, Republic of Egos: A Social History of the
Spanish Civil War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002);
Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and
Counterrevolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1991); Helen Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 1936--1939 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Gerald Howson, Arms for Spain:
The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War (New York: St. Martinâs Press,
1999).
[18] Morris Nadelman, interviewed by Paul Buhle, 18 April 1980, tape
171A, the Oral History of the American Left, Tamiment Library, New York
University, New York (hereafter cited as Tamiment Library).
[19] Howson, Arms for Spain; and Tierney, FDR and the Spanish Civil War.
[20] Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, ed. Chris Ealham,
trans. Paul Sharkey and Chris Ealham (Hastings, East Sussex: Meltzer
Press, 2005), 2:81--92; Alexander, Anarchists, 528--65; and Pages i
Blanch, "The War Economy and the War Industries," in War and Revolution,
84--92.
[21] Spanish Revolution, 6 November 1936. Emphasis in original.
[22] New York Times, 7 January 1937; and Cultura Proletaria (New York),
21 August 1937.
[23] Howson, Arms for Spain, 182--83; New York Times, 9 March 1937; Paul
Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History ofAnarchism in America
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 397; Harry Kelly,
"Roll Back the Years: Odyssey of a Libertarian" (unpublished manuscript,
n.d.), 37:G15, boxes 26--27, John Nicholas Beffel Collection, Robert F.
Wagner Labor Archives, Tamiment Library, New York University, New York.
[24] Bruno Bonturi file, busta 743, Casellario Politico Centrale,
Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome (hereafter cited as CPC).
[25] Keith Scott Watson, Single to Spain (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1937),
20. Watson refers to Bonturi as "Bruno Brunelli." My thanks to Matt
White for bringing this source to my attention.
[26] Maurizio Antonioli et al., eds., Dizionario biografico degli
anarchici italiani (Pisa: Biblioteca Franco Serantini, 2003), s.v.
"Bonturi, Bruno"; Clara Freedman Solomon, A Memoir: Some Anarchist
Activities in New York in the âThirties and âForties (Los Angeles: Clara
Freedman Solomon Memorial Gathering, 2001), 8; and Avrich, Anarchist
Voices, 450.
[27] Joseph J. Cohen, Di yidish-anarkhistishe bavegung in Amerike:
historisher iberblik un perzenlekhe iberlebungen (Philadelphia: Radical
Library, Branch 273 Arbeter Ring, 1945), 520.
[28] Dorothy Gallagher, All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of
Carlo Tresca (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 159.
[29] Cultura Proletaria, 23 January 1937.
[30] Zimmer, Immigrants against the State, 197--98; Alexander,
Anarchists, 98--99; and Eric R. Smith, American ReliefAid and the
Spanish Civil War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2013), 130.
Smith makes the incredible claim that the ULO "was unable to send any
funds to Spain because expenses outstripped contributions," but this
statement is directly contradicted by his own data, which unequivocally
confirm Sam Dolgoffâs recollection that the group "sent every cent
collected to Spain with no deductions for expenses." Smith, American
ReliefAid, 28, 130; and Dolgoff, Fragments, 19.
[31] Stanislao G. Pugliese, Carlo Roselli: Socialist Heretic and
Antifascist Exile (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999),
201--5; Fabrizio Giulietti, Il movimento anarchico italiano nella lotta
contro il fascismo, 1927--1945 (Rome: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2003), 248;
and LâAdunata dei Refrattari (Newark, NJ), 17 October 1936.
[32] Mario Gianfrate and Kenyon Zimmer, Michele Centrone, tra vecchio e
nuovo mondo: Anarchici pugliesi in difesa della liberta' spagnola
(Sammichele di Bari, Italy: SUMA Editore, 2012); Umberto Marzocchi,
Remembering Spain: Italian Anarchist Volunteers in the Spanish Civil
War, trans. Paul Sharkey (London: Kate Sharpley Library, 2002), 8--9;
and LâAdunata dei Refrattari, 12 September 1936.
[33] Verle B. Johnston, Legions of Babel: The International Brigades in
the Spanish Civil War (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1968), 151; R. Dan Richardson, Comintern Army: The International
Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 1982), 29; and Carroll, Odyssey, 72.
[34] LâAdunata dei Refrattari, 19 September 1936.
[35] Michael Jackson, Fallen Sparrows: The International Brigades in the
Spanish Civil War (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1994),
68; and Richardson, Comintern Army, 29.
[36] Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, rev. ed. (New York: Random
House, 2001), 942; and Augustine Souchy, Nacht uber Spanien: Burgerkrieg
und Revolution in Spanien (Darmstadt-Land, Germany: Verlag die Freie
Gesellschaft, 1954), 140.
[37] Bruno Mugnai, I volontari stranieri e le brigate internazionali in
Spagna (1936--1939): Foreign Volunteers and International Brigades in
Spain (1936--39) (Zanica, Italy: Soldiershop Publishing, 2010), 17;
Giulietti, Il movimento anarchico italiano, 245--46 n. 551; David Berry,
"French Anarchist Volunteers in Spain, 1936--1939: Contribution to a
Collective Biography of the French Anarchist Movement," Research on
Anarchism, 1997, http://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=2721
(accessed 20 November 2015); David Berry, "Volunteers in Spain,
1936--1939," in A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917--1945
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 237--52; Dieter Nelles, "Deutsche
Anarchosyndikalisten und Freiwillige in anarchistischen Milizen im
Spanischen Burgerkrieg," Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz
zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 33, no. 4 (1997):
500--519; and Gregor Benton, Chinese Migrants and Internationalism:
Forgotten Histories, 1917--1945 (New York: Routledge, 2007), 64, 69.
[38] Gerold Gino Baumann has identified 1,424 Latin American volunteers
and established the political affiliations of 148 (10.4 percent) of
them; if the 45 anarchists in his sample are representative of the
larger whole, then approximately 30 percent, or 423, of the total were
anarchists. The Volunteer, December 2002.
[39] On transatlantic anarchist networks see Teresa Abello i Guell, Les
relacions internacionals de lâanarquisme Catala' (1881--1914)
(Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1987); Davide Turcato, "Italian Anarchism as a
Transnational Movement, 1885--1915," International Review of Social
History 52 (2007): 407--45; James A. Baer, Anarchist Immigrants in Spain
and Argentina (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2015); and Zimmer,
Immigrants against the State.
[40] Un trentennio di attivita' anarchica (1915--1945) (Cesena, Italy:
LâAntistato, 1953), 171.
[41] Robert W. Kern, Red Years, Black Years: A Political History of
Spanish Anarchism, 1911--1937 (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of
Human Affairs, 1978), 212.
[42] Diego Abad de Santillan, Por que perdimos la guerra: una
contribucion a la historia de la tragedia espanola (1940; repr., Madrid:
G. del Toro, 1975), 211--15.
[43] Abe Bluestein to Emma Goldman, 1 July 1937, box 2, Warren Van
Valkenburgh Papers, Joseph A. Labadie Collection, Special Collections
Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Un trentennio, 171--72.
[44] Un trentennio, 171; and Fraser Ottanelli, "Anti-Fascism and the
Shaping of National and Ethnic Identity: Italian American Volunteers in
the Spanish Civil War," Journal of American Ethnic History 27, no. 1
(2007): 9--31.
[45] Giuseppe Esposito file, busta 1895, CPC; La Spagna nel nostro
cuore, 1936--1939: tre anni di storia non dimenticare (Rome: AICVAS,
1996), s.v. "Paliaga Giuseppe"; and Antonioli et al., Dizionario
biografico, s.v. "Borghi, Patrizio."
[46] Baer, Anarchist Immigrants, 161; and Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 148.
[47] Cultura Proletaria, 11 December 1937.
[48] David Porter, ed., Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish
Revolution, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006), 321 n. 17. Matt White
identifies 13 American IWW members who fought in Spain, though only 6 of
these are described as anarchists in the available sources. Matt White,
"Wobblies in the Spanish Civil War," Anarcho-Syndicalist Review no.
42/43 (2006): 39--47; and Matt White, "Wobblies in the Spanish
Revolution, Pt 2," Anarcho-Syndicalist Review no. 45 (2006--7): 26--28.
[49] Antonioli et al., Dizionario biografico, s.v. "Margarita, Ilario."
[50] Cultura Proletaria, 8 May 1937; and Jose Romero Cuesta, "El
comandante Alvaro Gil, se sinti6 por primera vez revolucionario en Nueva
York," Mundo grafico, 15 September 1937.
[51] Cultura Proletaria, 18 and 25 December 1937; and Pepe Send6n,
Falando Claro: a historia do anarquista Claro Jose Sendon Lamela
(Santiago de Compostela, Spain: Alvarellos Editora, 2014).
[52] Robert A. Rosenstone, "The Men of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion,"
Journal of American History 54, no. 2 (1967): 331; Stephen Schwartz,
Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailorsâ Union of the Pacific,
1885--1985 (Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1986); Bruce Nelson,
Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the
1930s (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Bieito Alonso
Fernandez, "Migraci6n y sindicalismo: Marineros y anarquistas espanoles
en Nueva York (1902--1930)," Historia Social no. 54 (2006): 113--35.
[53] Jackson, Fallen Sparrows, 29, 48.
[54] Carroll, Odyssey, 16; John Gerassi, The Premature Antifascists:
North American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War 1936--1939, an Oral
History (New York: Praeger, 1986), 23; and Cecil B. Eby, Comrades and
Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 268.
[55] Rosenstone, "Men of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion," 331--32, 334;
and Gerassi, Premature Antifascists, 46.
[56] Rosenstone, "Men of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion," 328, 331.
[57] Abel Paz, Durruti in the Spanish Revolution, trans. Chuck Morse
(Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2007), 488, 761 n. 113; and Alexander,
Anarchists, 252.
[58] La spagna nel nostro cuore, s.v. "Paliaga Giuseppe"; and Paz,
Durruti, chap. 18--22. My thanks to Dieter Nelles for information on
John Girney.
[59] Carroll, Odyssey, 72; and Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 448. Gilbert
Connolly was not the grandson of James Connolly, as Vanguard member
Sidney Solomon later claimed, though he may have been a relative; my
thanks to Evan Wolfson for help researching this question.
[60] Christopher Hall, In Spain with Orwell: George Orwell and the
Independent Labor Party Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, 1936--1939
(Perth, Scotland: Tippermuir Books, 2013), 103, 118, 225; and Mugnai, I
volontari stranieri, 15--16.
[61] Guerrino Fonda file, busta 2103, CPC; and La spagna nel nostro
cuore, s.v. "Fonda Guerrino."
[62] White, "Wobblies in the Spanish Civil War"; and White, "Wobblies in
the Spanish Revolution."
[63]
M. S. Venkataramani, "American Socialists, the Roosevelt
Administration, and the Spanish Civil War," International
Studies 3, no. 4 (October 1961): 406, 410--13; and Carroll,
Odyssey, 72.
[64] Harry Fisher, Comrades: Tales of a Brigadista in the Spanish Civil
War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1998), 23, 67; and Gerassi,
Premature Antifascists, 125.
[65] Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 458; and Enrico Arrigoni, Freedom: My
Dream, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA: Ardent Press, 2012), 231.
[66] Giuseppe Esposito file, busta 1895, CPC; and La spagna nel nostro
cuore, s.v. "Esposito Giuseppe."
[67] Robert Garland Colodny, The Struggle for Madrid: The Central Epic
of the Spanish Conflict (1936--37) (New York: Paine-Whitman, 1958);
Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 465--66; Beevor, Battle for Spain, 478--80;
and Nunzio Pernicone, "The Battle of Guadalajara: Italian Anti-Fascists
in the Spanish Civil War," La Parola del Popolo, November--December
1978, 132--40.
[68] La spagna nel nostro cuore, s.v. "Ghiara Alvaro."
[69] Lisa Margaret Lines, Milicianas: Women in Combat in the Spanish
Civil War (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 57--58.
[70] Paz, Durruti, 487; Lines, Milicianas, 81; and Franco Giannantoni
and Fabio Minazzi, eds., Il coraggio della memoria e la guerra civile
spagnola (1936--1939): studi, documenti inediti e testimonianze, con la
prima analisi storico-quantitativa dei volontari antifascisti italiani
(Milan: AICVAS, 2000), 52--53.
[71] Maria Giaconi file, busta 2378, CPC; Roberto Lucioli, Gli
antifascisti marchigiani nella guerra di Spagna (1936--1939) (Ancona,
Italy: ANPI/Instituto Regionale per la Storia del Movimento di
liberazione nelle Marche, 1992), 153; and Antonioli et al., Dizionario
biografico, s.v. "Giaconi, Maria."
[72] David Koven, "On Hanging In," unpublished manuscript, 1986, folder
131, David Koven Papers, International Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam; Mary Nash, Defying Male Civilization: Women in the Spanish
Civil War (Denver: Arden Press, 1995), 151--53; and Lines, Milicianas,
90.
[73] See, for example, Colodny, Struggle for Madrid, 36, 74--75; Gabriel
Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931--1939 (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 329; Richardson, Comintern Army,
19--20; Carroll, Odyssey, 154--55; Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 303, 469;
Seidman, Republic of Egos, 49--54; Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 254--60;
and Michael Alpert, The Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War,
1936--1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 52.
[74] Gerassi, Premature Antifascists, 145. See also Carl Marzani, The
Education of a Reluctant Radical, bk. 3, Spain, Munich and Dying Empires
(New York: Topical Books, 1994).
[75] George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938; repr., New York: Harcourt
Brace and Company, 1980), 28--29.
[76] Alexander, Anarchists, 145, 161--63; and Jackson, Spanish Republic,
263.
[77] Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 261; Beevor, Battle for Spain, 125;
and Alexander, Anarchists, 169.
[78] Pages i Blanch, War and Revolution, 49; and Orwell, Homage to
Catalonia, 27.
[79] Beevor, Battle for Spain, 125.
[80] Fraser, Blood of Spain, 133--34; Bolloten, Spanish Civil War,
262--65; and Alpert, Republican Army, 54, 140--43.
[81] Daniel Guerin, ed., No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology ofAnarchism,
trans. Paul Sharkey (San Francisco: AK Press, 1998), 2:254.
[82] LâAdunata dei Refrattari, 13 August 1938; and Alpert, Republican
Army, 68--69, 142.
[83] Alpert, Republican Army, 314.
[84] Beevor, Battle for Spain, 205.
[85] Wayne Thorpe, "Syndicalist Internationalism before World War II,"
in Revolutionary Syndicalism: An International Perspective, ed. Marcel
van der Linden and Wayne Thorpe (Brookfield, VT: Scholar Press, 1990),
203--5; Guttmann, Wound in the Heart, 137--39; Zimmer, Immigrants
against the State, 201--4; and Kern, Red Years, Black Years, 192.
[86] Radosh, Habeck, and Sevostianov, Spain Betrayed, 26, 87.
[87] Julian Casanova, Anarchism, the Republic, and Civil War in Spain,
1931--1939, ed. Paul Preston, trans. Andrew Dowling and Graham Pollok
(London: Routledge, 2005), 109; and Pages i Blanch, "The Formation of
the Popular Militias and the Aragon Front," in War and Revolution,
44--53.
[88] Marzocchi, Remembering Spain, 19--20; and Radosh, Habeck, and
Sevostianov, Spain Betrayed, 183.
[89] LâAdunata dei Refrattari, 13 August 1938; Cultura Proletaria, 3
July 1937; and Marzocchi, Remembering Spain, 23.
[90] Cultura Proletaria, 3 July 1937.
[91] See, for example, Radosh, Habeck, and Sevostianov, Spain Betrayed,
126, 132, 410.
[92] Alexander, Anarchists, 172--73; and Beevor, Battle for Spain, 205.
[93] Radosh, Habeck, and Sevostianov, Spain Betrayed, 55.
[94] Anna Sosnovsky to Rose Pesotta, n.d., folder 62, box 3, Rose
Pesotta Papers, Record Group 1469, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research,
New York.
[95] Radosh, Habeck, and Sevostianov, Spain Betrayed, 174; Bolloten,
Spanish Civil War, 430--31; Cattell, Communism and the Spanish Civil
War, 145; Payne, Spanish Civil War, 271; Helen Graham, "âAgainst the
Stateâ: A Genealogy of the Barcelona May Days (1937)," European History
Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1999): 485--542.
[96] Augustine Souchy, The Tragic Week in May (Barcelona: Oficina de
Informaci6n Exterior de la CNT y FAI, 1937); and Guillam6n, Ready for
Revolution, 177--78.
[97] Casanova, Anarchism, 125, 144; Marzocchi, Remembering Spain,
25--26; Guerra di Classe, 26 July 1937; and LâAdunata dei Refrattari, 13
August 1938.
[98] Randolfo Pacciardi, Il Battaglione Garibaldi: volontari italiani
nella Spagna repubblicana (1938; repr., Rome: La Lanterna, 1945), 217;
and Johnston, Legions of Babel, 108.
[99] Guerra di Classe, 5 May 1937; and LâAdunata dei Refrattari, 29 May
1937. Several alternative theories of Berneriâs assassination exist, but
none are definitive. See Howson, Arms for Spain, 225--27; Roberto
Gremmo, Bombe, soldi e anarchia: lâaffare Berneri e la tragedia dei
libertari italiani in Spagna (Biella, Italy: Storia ribelle, 2008);
Bolloten, Spanish Civil War, 875--77 n. 32; and Graham, Spanish
Republic, 294--96.
[100] Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, 195.
[101] Beevor, Battle for Spain, 303.
[102] Arrigoni, Freedom, 343--80; Peter Lamborn Wilson, "Brand: An
Italian Anarchist and His Dream" (unpublished manuscript, 2003), 5, copy
in authorâs possession.
[103] Bruno Bonturi file, busta 743, CPC.
[104] Rob Stradling, "English-Speaking Units of the International
Brigades: War, Politics and Discipline," Journal of Contemporary History
45, no. 4 (2010): 744--67.
[105] Steve Nelson, The Volunteers: A Personal Narrative of the Fight
against Fascism in Spain (New York: Masses and Mainstream, 1953), 118;
and Carroll, Odyssey, 154.
[106] Eby, Comrades and Commissars, 99; Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes,
and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World ofAmerican Communism
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 182.
[107] Carroll, Odyssey, 165--66; and Fisher, Comrades, 119.
[108] Rosenstone, Crusade of the Left, 310.
[109] Carroll, Odyssey, 185--87; and Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, Secret
World, 155--63.
[110] Schwartz, Brotherhood of the Sea, 123; United States Congress,
House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities,
Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States,
vol. 13, 76th Congr., 3rd sess. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1940), 7828; and West Coast Sailors (San Francisco), 15
August 1938.
[111] Challenge (New York), 13 and 17 August 1938; Industrial Worker
(Chicago), 10 September 1938; and Michael Petrou, Renegades: Canadians
in the Spanish Civil War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia
Press, 2008), 64. Challenge lists those killed as Harry Owens, "Morris,"
and Ray Steele, whereas the Industrial Worker lists only Ivan Silverman
by name. The inclusion of Steele is an error, as he died in April 1937.
However, rumors did circulate among Lincoln Battalion members that
Steele, officially the victim of a sniper, was killed by Anthony De
Maio, the same man implicated in Albert Wallachâs death. The articleâs
author, Abe Bluestein, heard these tales as the English-language
representative of the CNT-FAIâs Foreign Information Bureau in Barcelona
and likely conflated two different stories. On the rumors about Steele,
see William Herrick, Jumping the Line: The Adventures and Misadventures
of an American Radical (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2001), 211--12.
[112] White, "Wobblies in the Spanish Revolution," 27; and Thelma Ruby
and Peter Frye, Double or Nothing: Two Lives in the Theatre (London:
Janus, 1997), 112.
[113] LâAdunata dei Refrattari, 10 July 1937.
[114] Industrial Worker, 24 July 1937; LâAdunata dei Refrattari, 17 July
1937, 25 September 1937; and Guerra di Classe, 26 July 1937.
[115] One Big Union Monthly, September 1937.
[116] Un trentennio, 172--73; Muratori Matteo, "LâAsilo della
rivoluzione: Enrico Zambonini e la Colonia âLâAdunata dei Refrattariâ"
(thesis, Universita' di Modena e Reggio, 2009).
[117] La spagna nel nostro cuore, s.vv. "Deiana Pietro" and "Ghiara
Alvaro"; and Un trentennio, 172--73.
[118] Ottanelli, "Anti-Fascism," 22, 30 n. 60; Nicolas Guillen, En la
guerra de Espana: cronicas y enunciados (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre,
1988), 136; and Bruno Bonturi file, busta 743, CPC.
[119] Brooklyn Eagle, 8 June 1939; and Guerrino Fonda file, busta 2103,
CPC.
[120] Travis Tomchuk, Transnational Radicals: Italian Anarchists in
Canada and the U.S., 1915--1940 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press,
2015), 163--68; and Antonioli et al., Dizionario biografico, s.v.
"Gozzoli, Virgilio."
[121] Dolgoff, Fragments, 19.
[122] See, for example, Baer, Anarchist Immigrants; and Lisa A.
Kirschenbaum, International Communism and the Spanish Civil War:
Solidarity and Suspicion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
[123] Dolgoff, Fragments, 21.
[124] Andrew Cornell, "A New Anarchism Emerges, 1940--1954," Journal for
the Study of Radicalism 5, no. 1 (2011): 105--32.