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Title: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Author: Sam Sills Date: 2007 Language: en Topics: International Brigades, Spanish Civil War, history Source: Retrieved on 2nd August 2020 from http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/abe-brigade.html
During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), 2,800 American volunteers took
up arms to defend the Spanish Republic against a military rebellion led
by General Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. To the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade, which fought from 1937 through 1938, the defense of the
Republic represented the last hope of stopping the spread of
international fascism. The Lincolns fought alongside approximately
35,000 anti-fascists from fifty-two countries who, like themselves, were
organized under the aegis of the Comintern, and who also sought to “make
Madrid the tomb of fascism.” In keeping with Popular Front culture, the
Americans named their units the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the George
Washington Battalion, and the John Brown Battery. Together with the
British, Irish, Canadian, and other nationals they formed the Fifteenth
In- ternational Brigade. (“Lincoln Brigade” is a misnomer originating
with an American support organization, Friends of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade.) One hundred twenty-five American men and women also served
with the American Medical Bureau as nurses, doctors, technicians, and
ambulance drivers.
The conviction that made volunteering for a war against fascism possible
was born from the economic calamity and political turmoil of the 1930s.
Like many during the Great Depression, the young volunteers had an
experience of deprivation and injustice that led them to join the
burgeoning student, unemployed, union, and cultural movements that were
influenced by the Communist Party (CP) and other Left organizations.
Involvement in these groups exposed them to a Marxist and
internationalist perspective and, with their successes in galvanizing
people to conscious, political action, gave rise to a revolutionary
elan.
American radicalism was spurred by the appearance of profascist groups
like the Liberty League, and the expansion of fascism abroad. With
Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Hitler’s ascendance in 1933, and
Italy’s assault on Ethiopia in 1934--all accomplished without hindrance
from the governments of the West--the CP responded with the
coalition-building strategy of the Popular Front, attracting thousands
of aroused citizens directly into its ranks or into “front” organiza-
tions. When four right-wing Spanish generals, with German and Italian
support, attacked the legally elected government on July 19, 1936, a
desire to confront fascism in Spain swept through the progressive
communities in Europe and the Americas. Within weeks, militant German,
French, and Italian anti-fascists were fighting in Madrid. By January
1937, despite a State Department prohibition against travel to Spain,
Americans were crossing the Pyrenees.
The Lincolns came from all walks of life, all regions of the country,
and included seamen, students, the unemployed, miners, fur workers,
lumberjacks, teachers, salesmen, athletes, dancers, and artists. They
established the first racially integrated military unit in U.S. history
and were the first to be led by a black commander. At least 60 percent
were members of the Young Communist League or CP. “Wobblies” (members of
the Industrial Workers of the World or “IWW”), socialists, and the
unaffiliated also joined. The Socialists formed their own [Eugene] Debs
Column for Spain, but open recruitment brought on government
suppression.
The reaction of Western governments to the war was ambivalent and
duplicitous. They agreed to a nonintervention pact and the United States
embargoed aid to the Spanish belligerents, policies intended to
de-escalate the war but whose selective enforcement undermined the
Republic. While Germany and Italy supplied Franco with troops, tanks,
submarines, and a modernized air force (the first to bomb open cities,
most notably Guernica), the nonintervention policy only prevented arms
from reaching the Republic. General Motors, Texaco, and other American
corporations further assisted Franco with trucks and fuel. The Soviet
Union and Mexico were the only governments to sell armaments to the
Republic, although much of them were impounded at the French border.
Throughout the war, a vociferous political and cultural movement in
America rallied to the Republic by raising money for medical aid and
demanding an end to the embargo. Such participants as Albert Einstein,
Dorothy Parker, Gene Kelly, Paul Robeson, Helen Keller, A. Philip
Randolph, and Gypsy Rose Lee reflected the wide base of support for the
Republican cause.
Self-motivated and ideological, the Lincolns attempted to create an
egalitarian “people’s army”; officers were distinguished only by small
bars on their berets and in some cases rank-and-file soldiers elected
their own officers. Traditional military protocol was shunned, although
not always successfully. A political commissar explained the politics of
the war to the volunteers and tended to their needs and morale. The
Lincoln Brigade helped ease the pressure on Madrid, giving the Republic
time to train and organize its own popular army. The subject of
respectful news reports by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Herbert
Matthews, Martha Gellhorn, and Lillian Hellman, the brigade helped
strengthen anti-fascist opinion in the United States. Yet the Lincolns
and the Republican military, fighting with inadequate weaponry, could
not withstand the forces allied against them. By the end, the Lincolns
had lost nearly 750 men and sustained a casualty rate higher than that
suffered by Americans in World War II. Few escaped injury. In November
1938, as a last attempt to pressure Hitler and Mussolini into
repatriating their troops, Spanish prime minister Juan Negrin ordered
the withdrawal of the International Brigades. The Axis coalition refused
to follow suit and Madrid fell in March 1939.
The Lincolns returned home as heroes of the anti-fascist cause but
enjoyed no official recognition of their deed. Many Lincolns soon
aroused bitterness within sectors of the Left when, with the signing of
the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact in 1939, they supported the CP’s
call for the United States to stay out of WWII. Once the United States
and the Soviet Union entered the war, however, many of the veterans
enlisted in the armed forces or served with the merchant marine. In a
foreshadowing of the McCarthy period, the armed forces designated the
Lincolns “premature antifascists” and confined them to their bases. Many
successfully protested and were allowed to see action. Among the core
agents of the Office of Strategic Services were Lincoln veterans whose
contacts with the European partisans, forged in Spain, were key to OSS
missions.
In the 1950s most veterans, whether Communist or not, were harassed or
forced out of their jobs by the FBI. Communist Lincolns in particular
were hit hard by the repressive Subversive Activities Control Board, the
Smith Act, and state sedition laws, although over time all but a few
convictions were overturned. In the 1950s and 1960s the majority of
Lincoln veterans quit the CP but continued to be active on the Left.
Notwithstanding its exclusion from American textbooks, the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade commands attention as a unique example of prescient,
radical, and selfless action in the cause of international freedom.