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Title: With the POUM
Author: Andy Durgan
Date: February 2018
Language: en
Topics: POUM, Spanish Civil War, International Brigades, volunteers, Spanish Revolution
Source: Retrieved on 23rd August 2020 from https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/ebre38/article/view/21999/23558
Notes: First published in Revista Internacional de la Guerra Civil (1936–1939), number 8. ISSN: 1696–2672 / ISSN-e: 1885–2580

Andy Durgan

With the POUM

Abstract

While the history of the International Brigades is well documented,

little is known about the hundreds of foreign volunteers who fought with

the workers’ militias. This article provides an overview of the origins

and characteristics of the six hundred or so international militia who

fought with the POUM on the Aragon front during the first ten months of

the Civil War. It contrasts their experience with the view provided in

George Orwel ’s Homage to Catalonia, looking at both their military role

and their subsequent fate once the POUM was il egalised in June in 1937

and its militia disbanded. Slandered as «fascist agents», dozens of

these foreign volunteers were arrested. However, others would continue

to fight in other units, including the International Brigades. Final y,

the article examines the destiny of some of these volunteers as

combatants and victims in the Second World War.

Keywords: Aragon Front, POUM, International Volunteers

---

Introduction

During the Spanish Civil War international volunteers, albeit a small

minority of the Popular Army, played an important role as shock troops

in defence of the Republic.

There is an extensive literature relating to the 32,000 foreigners who

fought with the International Brigades. However little is known about

the hundreds of other international volunteers who remained in the

workers’ militias after the formation of the Brigades in October 1936.

In the case of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, George

Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is the principle account of the experience

of these volunteers. Orwell’s text has shaped critical opinion about the

revolution, the role of the Communists and the realities of life at the

font. However, given the nature of his book and the circumstances it was

written in, its scope is inevitably limited. The other six hundred or so

foreigners who fought with the POUM have largely remained in Orwell’s

shadow. Moreover, research into the experience of these volunteers is

hindered by the limited and extremely dis-persed nature of archival

material or its complete absence.

The motivations and origins of the POUM’s foreign combatants on the

Aragon front during the first ten months of the war were similar to

those who made up the far more numerous International Brigades. Both

paid a high price in the struggle against fascism.[1] The principal, and

terrible, difference between the two forces was that rather than be

treated as heroes the POUM’s foreign combatants would be subject to a

campaign of vilification as «agents of fascism».

The International Group

With the defeat of the military rising in Catalonia, the workers’

organisations hurriedly formed militias to march on Zaragoza and Aragon,

which was in fascist hands. The first column, headed by CNT leader

Benaventura Durruti, left Barcelona on 23 July. Two more columns left

the following day. The third of these columns was made up of members of

the POUM and the newly formed Catalan Communist Party, the PSUC. After

pick-ing up more volunteers on the way, a specific POUM column was

organised in the party’s stronghold of Lleida before setting out for

Eastern Aragon.[2] Like other militia columns, the POUM militias

established committees in the villages they occupied, collectivised land

and dispensed revolutionary justice.

Among the thousand combatants in the first POUM column were around

thirty foreign volunteers, mostly German and Italian anti-fascist

refugees, already resident in Barcelona. Some were members of parties

affiliated to the International Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Unity

(IBRSU), which had been founded by a dozen dissident communist and left

socialist parties, including the forerunners of the POUM, in 1933.[3]

The IBRSU was highly critical of Stalinism and counter-posed the

creation of a Workers’ United against fascism to the Popular Front

strategy, which they believed subordinated the working class to

bourgeois democracy.

By 1936, Germans constituted the largest community of political refugees

in Barcelona. They included members of the IBRSU affiliated German

Socialist Workers’ Party (SAPD)[4] and the German Opposition Communist

Party (KPD-O).[5] Both parties would play a prominent role in supporting

the POUM, both at the front and in the rear. With the vic-tory of the

Popular Front in February 1936, more refugees had made their way to

Barcelona, especially Italians; including several members of the Italian

Maximalist Socialist Party (PSMI), which was aligned with the IBRSU, and

a group of Trotskyists who would also enter into contact with the POUM.

Along with many other anti fascist refugees, these first combatants had

taken part in the street fighting on 19 July in the Catalan capital,

during which a group led by the Italian Trotskyist Virginia Gervasini

and the Austrian PSMI militant Rosa Winkler had seized the Hotel Falcón

in the Rambles which would house many of the foreigners who arrived over

coming months to support the POUM.

Upon arriving in Aragon the POUM column divided; some moving towards the

village of Sietamo, which was briefly taken by a combined force of CNT,

POUM and local militia.[6] The rest of the Column, having taken

Alcubierre and other villages with little or no opposition, arrived in

Leciñena on the Zaragoza road on 5 August; from where on 17 August they

attacked the village of Perdiguera. Among those who took part in what

turned out to be a hapless assault by the ill-equipped and badly

organised militia was the talent-ed young British poet John Cornford and

several KPD(O) members. Cornford, although a member of the British

Communist Party, had joined the POUM militia in Leciñena by chance on 14

August, having accompanied the Austrian journalist Franz Borkenau to the

front. Within a month he returned ill to Britain where he organised one

of the first groups of British volunteers. He would die fighting with

the International Brigades in Lopera, Andalucia on 28 December 1936.[7]

During the first weeks of the war, hundreds of foreign leftists crossed

the border to fight fascism and to take part in the revolution. The

workers’ organisations sought both to channel this solidarity and to vet

volunteers. The Italian Trotskyist Nicola Di Bartolo-meo was initially

appointed by the POUM to coordinate the party’s foreign sympathisers

through the United International Antifascist Refugees’ Centre, which he

had established with Virginia Gervasini.

Although international support for the POUM came principally from

parties affiliated to the IBRSU and the KPD(O), the first specifically

international unit would be formed on the initiative of the Trotskyists

and the Italian Left Communists, follows of Amadeo Bordiga.[8] During

the first days of the revolution, the international Trotskyist movement

and Trotsky himself had sought to re-establish relations with the

POUM.[9] Trotskyist volunteers, principally French and Italian, had been

fighting with the POUM since the beginning of the war. The Bordigists’

exile group had split over the nature of the war in Spain.

A minority argued which that it was a revolutionary war had decided to

fight fascism in Spain; the majority rejected such participation on the

grounds that it was a war between two capitalist blocs.

Negotiations between representatives of the Bordigists and the

Trotskyists and the POUM led to the formation of the Lenin International

Group (LIG). After a week’s training the LIG left Barcelona on 29 August

as part of a an eight-hundred-strong POUM Column. The group was

commanded by Enrico Russo[10] and initially consisted of fifty, mainly

French and Italian, volunteers. Other foreign combatants already at the

front integrated into the Group, as did a steady stream of new

volunteers over the coming weeks. By October, the International Group

(or «Column» as it was also referred to), forming part of the POUM’s

2^(nd) Column, had at least 150 members.

By September there were around three thousand combatants in the POUM’s

columns, mostly concentrated to the east of Huesca; the rest being based

in Leciñena and Alcubierre. The arrival of the International Group at

the front on 30 August coincided with the first really serious fighting

involving the POUM militia. It immediately joined four hundred

combatants, mostly members of the party’s youth wing, the Juventud

Comunista Ibérica (JCI), which had occupied a wedge of territory centred

on the villages of Tierz and Quicena, thus isolating the fascist

positions on the Estrecho Quinto ridge and Monte Aragón to the east of

Huesca.

Led by cadre of the JCI with experience of street fighting, the militia

forces resisted over the next four weeks attacks by far stronger forces

from Huesca. The presence of the International Group, which included a

small number of volunteers with experience from the First World War and

paramilitary action in Germany and Italy, reinforced the militia’s

morale and capacity to resist. The young French Trotskyist Robert De

Fauconnet became the POUM’s first international martyr when he was

killed in fighting to cut the Barbastro road on 6 September. In the

following weeks the POUM militia, now reinforced, suffered dozens more

casualties, including members of the international contingent.[11]

With the abandonment of Estrecho Quinto and Monte Aragón by the fascists

on 30 September the militia could now concentrate on besieging Huesca.

However, an all-out offensive to take the city was not attempted until

21 October, only to come to a stand-still the following day.[12] The

failure of the offensive was later blamed on both the militias’

inadequacies and the treachery of their overall commander Colonel José

Villalba.[13]

In the previous weeks valuable time had been wasted, allowing the

fascists to establish a strong and well-armed line of defence around

Huesca. The front now remained stable and there would be no more

attempts to take the city until June the fol owing year.

The volunteers

Most of the POUM’s foreign volunteers arrived between August and

November 1936, helped across France and the border by Marcel Pivert’s

supporters in the French Socialist Party, the Gauche révolutionnaire.

During the next ten months probably at least six hundred foreign

volunteers passed through the POUM militia’s ranks on the Aragón

front.[14]

Although those who were politically organised were from organisations

sympa-thetic to the POUM, in the early weeks of the war there were also

a handful of foreign Communists and anarchists in its militia.[15]

Others were not motivated by any particular political commitment other

than a general «anti-fascism».[16] At first it seems to have been fairly

easy to change units. Foreign volunteers with the POUM switched to CNT

and PSUC

units and vice versa. The intention of the Republican government after

October 1936 was to concentrate all foreign combatants in the

International Brigades. While Communist units integrated into the

Brigades more or less immediately, there was reluctance among the CNT

and POUM international contingents to put themselves under Stalinist

control.

On the Aragon front only a minority of anarchist and POUM foreign

fighters transferred to the International Brigades.

To date it has been possible to identify 367 volunteers from 27

different countries with the POUM in Aragón at some time between August

1936 and June 1937. Of these 107 were German, 77 Italian, 44 French, 39

British, 16 Belgian, 14 Dutch, 10 Polish, 9 Austrian, 8 American and 7

Swiss. There were also volunteers from Algeria, Argentina, Australia,

Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania,

Morocco, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Rumania, South Africa and

Yugoslavia.[17]

As was also the case with the International Brigades the majority of the

POUM’s foreign volunteers came from countries with authoritarian or

fascist governments. The Germans were the most numerous, probably

accounting for over a third of all the POUM’s international

contingent.[18] Most had left Germany after the Nazis came to power in

1933; some were already resident in Spain before the Civil War, the rest

coming from France once the conflict had started. Some had spent time

working clandestinely in Germany, others had been imprisoned in

concentration camps. Both the KPD(O) and the SAPD en-couraged its

members in exile to go to Spain; especially those with military

experience.

Most of the Germans who served as officers, political commissars or

machine gunners were members of these two parties.

Italians formed the second largest group. The majority had been active

in anti fascist activities, many having spent time in prison, before

going into exile. These were mainly refugees living in France or Spain.

Apart from the Trotskyists and Bordigists in the LIG, who were mostly

former members of the PCI, the largest group of organised Italian

combatants were from the PSMI.

Given that French combatants made up a third of all International

Brigade troops, it is reasonable to suppose there were considerably more

French volunteers in the POUM militia’s ranks than the forty-two

identified. Moreover, both North African and Polish combatants often

held French nationality. A further thirty-six volunteers resident in

France, probably of Spanish origin, were also in the party’s

militia.[19]

There were few British volunteers before the arrival of the Independent

Labour Party contingent in January 1937. Most of the Belgian volunteers

were members of the Trotskyist Parti Socialiste Révolutionnaire; several

of whom had previously fought in the defence of Irun.[20] Nearly all of

the Dutch volunteers appear to have been members of the IBRSU affiliated

Revolutionary Socialist Workers’ Party (RSAP), which had been founded by

left socialists and Trotskyists in 1935.

Like the International Brigades, many of the POUM volunteers were of

Jewish origin; this was particularly the case among the German, Polish

and Belgian volunteers and in the militia’s medical services. Also like

the Brigades, most of the POUM’s foreign contingent were in their late

twenties and of working class origin. Given that the militias were less

strict about the age of volunteers there were quite a few who were under

twenty or over forty. The latter included the few volunteers with

military experience and, in the case of the Germans and Italians in

particular, veterans of the revolutionary move-ments of the early

twenties.

Apart from Orwell and Cornford, other writers and artists with the POUM

militia were the Polish writer Wladamir Malacki[21], better known as

Jean Malaquais, the surrealist poets Benjamin Péret[22] and the Cuban

Juan Brea, the German artists Karl Heidenreich[23] and Otto Töwe, the

British dancer and writer Greville Teixidor and the Italian playwright

Mario Traverso.

Probably the most important contribution to the militias of the POUM’s

international volunteers was as officers and in the medical services.

Most foreign officers led international units, as was the case with

Enrico Russo and the Frenchman Jean-Claude Laf-argue who commanded the

Lenin International Group or Bob Edwards of the ILP. Others played an

important role in the POUM command structure as a whole, as was the

case, in particular, of the Italian Camillo Lanzillota, the German Hans

Reiter and the Russian-born Georges Kopp.

As a student Lanzilotta had participated in the struggle against fascist

squads in Bari, Pisa and Rome, being wounded twice. In 1922 he joined

the Italian army, where he was active in clandestine anti fascist

activity until his arrest in 1934. After escaping from prison in August

1936 he made his way, via France, to Spain where he enlisted in the

POUM’s International Column. His military experience led him to be

appointed Chief of Staff of the party’s Lenin Division.

Reiter came from a military family and had been a student at the Munich

Cadets’

School. He would claim in Spain that he had been imprisoned in a

concentration camp and his father had been murdered by the Nazis.24 What

seems clear is that Reiter spent some time in the Foreign Legion before

going to Spain in 1935. In charge of a machine gun squad he took part in

fighting round Quicena in September 1936 and later commanded the POUM’s

Shock Battalion.

Kopp presented himself as a Belgian engineer and inventor, a socialist

and reserve army officer. He supposedly arrived at the front on the run

from his country, having been sentenced to fifteen years in prison in

his absence for «making explosives for a foreign power».25 However,

recent research has shown Kopp’s account of who he was to be par-tially

untrue. Kopp did indeed work as an engineer, but had never finished his

studies, so was not formally qualified as such. There is no evidence

that he was neither in the army nor involved in smuggling military aid

to Spain. In reality Kopp had a somewhat turbu-lent past. He had been

born in Saint Petersburg to Belgian parents in 1902, and although he had

lived in Belgium since he was seven years old, never took out Belgian

nationality.

He had aspirations as an inventor and was involved in a number of

unsuccessful schemes.

The most likely reasons for his leaving Belgium were family problems and

debt. Kopp arrived in Barcelona in autum 1936 and convinced the POUM of

his anti-fascist and military credentials and subsequently commanded

different units on the Huesca front. Despite his deception, he proved,

according to various testimonies, a brave and efficient officer.

Kopp would later command the Lenin Division’s Third Regiment.[24]

Other foreign volunteers that served as officers in the POUM militia

were the Germans Kurz Alvarez [25], Peter Blachstein, Josep Halm, Erich

Hartmut[26], Peter Huber and Hans Sitting, the Italians Enrico Crespi

and Paolo Girelli[27], the Argentine Juan Moner[28], the Pole Benjamin

Lewinski[29] and the Yugoslav Franjo Čagalj.

Prominent among the POUM’s Political Commissars, were the Rumanian

Sebastian Wisner and the German Walter Schwarz.[30] Wisner, probably a

member of Rumanian Unified Socialist Party, served on the militia’s

General Staff. Schwarz liaised between the German contingent and the

POUM leadership. Other foreign Commissars included the Germans Otto

Breismann and Horst Lichenstein and the Italians Giuseppe Borgo and Amos

Salvadori.

Foreign volunteers who played a central role in the militia’s medical

services.

Among the doctors at the front were the Americans Max Gerchik and Louis

Levin, the Austrian Sam Salzmann, the German Charlotte Margolin, the

Italian Berardino Fienga, the Peruvian José Briones, the Pole Olga

Monskheli Preissand the Rumanians Felix Ippen and Salomán Wisner.

Gerchik, a medical student, had come to Barcelona to participate in the

Popular Olympics. Levin served as doctor with the ILP Contingent.

Margolin, a member of the KPD(O), who had previously worked at the

prestigious Berlin Medical University, had arrived in Barcelona in

1934.[31] After a period at the front with the Miguel Pedrola Column,

she worked at the Maurin Sanatorium in Barcelona. Fienga, a sympathiser

of the Bordigists, had gone to the Madrid front with the JSU’s October

Battalion in July 1936 where he was wounded. He later went to Barcelona

where he organised the Lenin Division’s medical services.[32] Briones

had worked as a doctor in the village of Oliana, Lleida, before going to

the front with the POUM’s first Column[33]. Monskheli Preiss had arrived

in Barcelona in August, before going to the front with Margolin on 15

September, where she also served in the Pedrola Column. Salomán Wisner (

Mina), brother of the Commissar Sebastian Wisner, had participated in

the Hungarian revolution in 1919 and the Bulgarian Communist uprising in

1923. A specialist in head injuries, and work related injuries he had

arrived in Barcelona in May 1936 and helped organise the POUM’s first

medical services at the front.

Despite the POUM’s defence of the incorporation of women in the

revolutionary process and the need for their political organisation, few

party militiawomen seem to have fought. Most women who were at the front

with the POUM, as with other militias, were in the medical services or

cooked.

There were various foreign women at the front with the POUM at some

stage, including, apart from Margolin and Monskheli, the Austrian Rosa

Winkler; the Britons Greville Teixidor (Foster) and Sybil Windgate, the

French woman Susagna Lemaitre, the Germans Angelina Franziska, Else

Homberger (Henschke) and Eva Laufer and the Italian Giuseppa Buisan.

Other foreign women militants played an active role in the rearguard,

such as Virginia Gervasini or the British-born Mary Low. Most appear to

have been connected to the militia’s medical services. Franziska,

Laufer, Windgate, Zimbal and, probably, Lemaitre were nurses. Windgate,

a member of the Socialist League, was only briefly at the front with the

ILP Contingent before the party’s representative in Barcelona, John

McNair, forced her to return to the rear. Laufer, a medical student,

later worked as an or-thopaedist in Lleida hospital. Lemaitre was

attached to the POUM Artillery.

Whether the other women fought is unknown. Certainly on the Aragón front

there was no equivalent of the Argentine Mika Etchebéhère who led a POUM

Company on the Madrid front. Rosa Winkler went to the front with the

LIG, but had returned to Barcelona by October. The writer and dancer

Teixidor was briefly with the POUM at the beginning of the war before

joining the Durruti Column. The Swiss Trotskyist Clara Thalmann spent a

short time with the POUM Shock Battalion in April 1937 after having been

with the Durruti Column.[34]

One exception was the nineteen-year-old German Magarete Zimbal who

before the war had fled her Nazi father, travelling to Spain in 1933,

where she met Erwin Bresler.

They lived by busking and in 1936 arrived in Sitges, where they joined

the JCI and lived with KPD(O) members Else Homberger and Gerhard

Henschke. In August 1936 all four went as part of the POUM contingent in

the campaign to retake Mallorca where Bresler was killed. Upon returning

to Barcelona, Zimbal went to the Aragon front. She was killed on 22

October during the offensive on Huesca.

At the time of her death, Zimbal was described as a nurse, but she had

also fought.

She became a martyr for the JCI and her funeral in Barcelona was

accompanied by a large demonstration of all the workers’ organisations.

In her honour it was decided to form a solely women’s battalion, the

Magarita Zimbal Battalion, but this never materialised, despite the POUM

being the only workers’ organisation to offer women military training in

the rearguard.[35]

The Lenin Division

As the war progressed it was clear on the Republican side there was an

urgent need to organise the war effort on a more centralised and

efficient basis. Parallel to the rebuilding of the Republican state was

the organisation in October 1936 of the new Popular Army. The POUM also

insisted, contrary to what is often asserted, on the creation of unified

command and a disciplined army. Rather than the «bourgeois» Popular

Army, such an army would be modelled on the Soviet Red Army during the

years of the Russian Civil War. It would be under control of the

workers’ organisations, albeit not organised along party or union lines

as were the militias. All workers between the ages of 18 and 30 would be

recruited to fight. As a measure of «revolutionary hygiene» bourgeois

and middle class elements would only carry out logistical tasks such as

digging trenches.[36]

In Catalonia, the militias had been under the control of the Anti

Fascist Militia Committee and, after early October, by the newly unified

Catalan Government. With the introduction of militarisation, the Catalan

militias were transformed into the Catalan Popular Army in December 1936

controlled by the Generalitat’s Defence Council (Ministry), rather than

by the Republican Government in Valencia. The Catalan Army was divided

into Divisions, each with three Regiments made up of four Battalions of

440 men, with their own artillery, machine gun, communications and

sapper units.[37]

Even before the setting up of the Catalan Army, the POUM’s militia had

undergone its own version of «militarisation» under Josep Rovira[38],

who had been appointed commander of the party’s forces on 19 September.

Rovira introduced more efficient training, better defences and military

re-organisation. Previously, like other militia, the POUM’s forces had

been organised into Centurias or Banderas of around one hundred

combatants. Battalions were formed on the basis on four Centurias, which

in turn became companies.

In contrast to the view popularised by Orwell, memoirs and reports of

the time present the POUM militia as well organised and disciplined,

despite the adverse circumstances. Discipline was maintained principally

on the basis of the political commitment of the combatants; desertions

were very rare, despite the lack of leave.[39] Likewise positions were

more efficiently defended than the impression given by Orwell. A report

written by the veteran KPD(O) militant, Waldemar Bolze, in April 1937

describes the impressive state of the defence networks in the

Tierz-Quicena sector, where trenches in some places were barely fifty

metres from the enemy.[40]

By late December 1936, the POUM militia was organised into four columns:

the Miguel Pedrola Column, formerly the Second, the Joaquin Maurin

Column and the smaller Miguel Lobo and Juventud Comunista Ibérica

Columns. These Columns occupied a fifteen kilometre stretch of the

Huesca front that ran from La Granja (to the east of Montflorite) in the

south to near Fornillos de Apiés in the north. While the larger Pedrola

and Maurín Columns held the section to the north of the hamlet of

Bellestar, the Lobo and JCI Columns were stationed around Montflorite

and in the Sierra de Alcubierre to the south.

From late November, the POUM columns already referred to themselves as

the «Lenin Division» but the formal reorganisation of the Columns as

part of the Catalan Popular Army into Regiments, with Battalions and

Companies was not complete until late March 1937.[41]

By then the Lenin Division was supposedly composed of 6,590 troops:

5,750 infantry, 196 artillerymen (two batteries), 264 cavalry and 380

sappers (two companies).[42]

All the militia forces on the Aragón front complained of the lack of

arms. There were constant calls for arms to be sent to the front and for

an immediate offensive to be launched. In particular, the lack of

artillery and air cover made the taking of (after early October 1936)

well-defended enemy positions near impossible.[43] Increasingly the

Republican Government was accused of sabotaging the Aragon front because

it was dominated by the revolutionary left.

The Lenin Division lack of sufficient arms and material meant that it

was never formally recognised by the Catalan Government. For 5,750

infantry the Lenin Division had 3,752 rifles (65%) compared to the

Ascaso Division, with whom it shared the Huesca front, which had 5,495

rifles for 7,090 infantry (77%). A bigger problem was the lack of

machine guns – so essential for trench warfare. The Lenin Division had

only twenty-five compared to the Ascaso Division’s ninety-four.[44]

The figures on their own do not take into account the quality of arms

available.

Testimonies agree on the poor quality of both rifles and machine guns

and the lack of ammunition, which even if this was available was often

of different calibres. Artillery fire, due to lack of shells and the

poor state of the cannons, was sporadic and generally inac-curate. The

arms available only began to improve slightly when the Catalan Army was

integrated into the Popular Army in May 1937.

The Army of Catalonia now became the Army of the East under the control

of the General Staff of the Popular Army. Each Division was with

numbered and re-organised into three Mixed Brigades, each consisting of

four Battalions with its attendant sections, totalling, in theory, 4,269

men. However, on the Aragón front no Mixed Brigade was ever complete and

when the front fell in March 1938 few had more than two and half

thousand troops, about the same size as the Regiments they replaced a

year before.[45] The Lenin Division was now formally recognised,

becoming the 29^(th) Division; albeit it only had sufficient men and

material for two Brigades, the 128^(th) and the 129^(th).[46]

Orwell and the ILP Contingent

On 12 January, twenty-five volunteers organised by the ILP arrived in

Barcelona.

The ILP had broken with the Labour Party in 1932 over its support for

the National Government and had evolved towards revolutionary socialism,

becoming one the principal organisers of the IBRSU. It had begun to

organise recruitment for Spain in November after one of its leaders Bob

Edwards had travel ed to Barcelona with an ambulance donated to the

POUM. This first group was presented as the vanguard of a larger force

to fol ow, but the British Government’s ban on its citizens fighting in

foreign armies stopped further recruitment.[47] They were joined at the

front by other English-speaking volunteers including Orwell, who had

arrived at the front with a Centuria of the new JCI Column three weeks

beforehand.

Over the next five months at least forty-five volunteers, including

medical personnel, passed through the ILP Contigent’s ranks. Of these,

thirty-five were British citizens, four were Americans, three Irish, one

Australian, one Polish and one South African.

The British citizens included at least six Scots, five Welsh and two

from Northern Ireland.

Twenty-four of them are known to have been members of the ILP. Three

were members of the Socialist League, a faction inside the Labour Party.

The Pole Juliusz Kampfer was a member of the Polish Independent

Socialist Party; the American Harry Milton of the Revolutionary Workers’

League and the eighteen-year-old Stafford Cottman of the Young Communist

League.[48] According to the MI5 fifteen of the ILP Contingent had

military experience before going to Spain.[49]

Orwell had gone to the front with young inexperienced militia; part of

the recently formed JCI Column which was sent to the Alcubierre

mountains. There they joined the remnants of the probably demoralised

forces that had been overrun in Leciñena the previous October. Orwell

was «profoundly disgusted» when he found that the enemy was some seven

hundred metres away. He seems unaware that other militia, principal y

from the PSUC’s Carlos Marx Division, were very close to the fascists’

isolated «San Simon» position in front of him which had been taken after

the fall of Leciñena. In late February, the POUM forces in the

Alcubierre area were sent some sixty kilometres north to join their

comrades facing Huesca. The ILP Contingent was transferred to the lines

in front of La Granja, as part of the newly organised Third Regiment

under the command of Georges Kopp. Although Orwell commented on the

improvement in the condition of the defences, as well as in arms and

training, he was still in what was the quietest part of a by now quiet

front.

The Shock Battalion

With the reorganisation of the POUM militias, the foreign volunteers

were also reorganised. In October the Lenin International Group had

suffered a crisis when twenty-nine of its members, mainly Bordigists and

Trotskyists, resigned in protest at the POUM’s acceptance of

militarisation.[50] The Bordigists now claimed the war had ceased to be

revolutionary and most left for France or went to work in the rearguard;

albeit Enrico Russo, the Group’s commander, remained on the POUM

Militia’s General Staff until at least January 1937.[51] Having become

increasingly critical of the POUM, especial y since its decision to join

the Catalan Government in late September 1936, some of the Trotskyists

now went to fight in CNT units. Others, like the members of the

dissident Parti Communiste Internationaliste or the Dutch remained

inside the POUM militia. A consequence of the growing ten-sion between

the POUM and the Trotskyists was the replacement of Di Bartolmeo with

the Austrian dissident communist Kurt Landau as coordinator of the

POUM’s international department. Max Diamant, who arrived in Barcelona

in October to represent the SAPD, con-solidated the hold of IBRSU

affiliates over the POUM’s international apparatus.

Meanwhile a renewed attempt on 21 November to take the Loma del

Manicomio in the Quicena sector led Rovira to see the need to organise a

Shock Battalion based on volunteers who had some military experience.

Two thirds of the new «Rovira Shock Battalion» were foreign volunteers;

many of the rest being former members of the Bandera Pedrola that had

showed their worth during the fighting round the Barbastro road in

September.

Most of the, by now numerous, German contingent were drafted into the

Shock Battalion, as were the majority of Dutch and Central European

volunteers and a smattering of other nationalities. The militia’s

General Staff were convinced of the German combatants’ military prowess

and they were initial y prominent among its officers and commissars. The

KPD(O) member Peter Huber was its first commander. Reiter was initial y

second in command.

In theory the new Battalion’s troops had to be members of the POUM or

one of the IBRSU affiliated parties and be prepared to «struggle till

death».[52] The Battalion was provided with the best arms and its own

dark green uniforms.[53] Discipline and training was strict and anyone

refusing to obey an order «would probably be shot». At its base in

Fañanás, about twelve kilometres behind the lines, the Battalion set up

its own gymnasi-um, library and school, which, among other things,

taught languages.[54] With the forming of the Shock Battalion, a

separate International Column (or Group) ceased to exist. Those foreign

volunteers not in the new Battalion were integrated into different

Centurias or specific sections, as was the case with the Gauche

révolutionnaire, PSMI and ILP.

The little fighting POUM troops participated in prior to the offensive

in June 1937 involved the Shock Battalion.[55] It first saw action on 6

January when Republican forces retook the villages of Lierta and

Arascués, some fifteen kilometres to the north of Huesca, that had been

captured by the fascists on 20 December. Apart from the Shock Battalion,

troops from two other POUM Centurias took part, as did units from the

CNT’s Ascaso Division and the Barbastro Militias. Led by Huber and

Reiter’s machine gun section, the Shock Battalion took the Arascués

ridge and then stormed the vil age of Liertes in a lightening attack,

after the CNT militia had secured the flanks. The militia involved were

congratulated for their «brilliant» success. At least three young

international volunteers lost their lives.[56]

On 19 February fascist troops took the village of Vivel del Rio Martin,

eighty kilometres to the north of Teruel. Lacking reserves in the area,

an expedition including troops from the Shock Battalion, now under the

command of Reiter, and the Maurin and JCI Columns, the PSUC and CNT

militias was sent four days later to retake the village. Despite the

POUM and CNT troops occupying positions around Vivel, the attack was

beaten back. In the following weeks the POUM press blamed the PSUC unit

for having remained passive, and thus sabotaging the attack.[57]

The bloodiest action involving the Shock Battalion prior to the June

offensive, was a renewed attempt to seize the strategical y important

ridge known as the Loma del Manicomio on 17 March 1937. Designated by

the fascist forces as «Position Number 2», the two hil ocks that formed

the ridge dominated the surrounding area. The assault was part of an

operation designed by the General Staff to take pressure off Guadalajara

(the battle had started on 8 March) and to strengthen positions so as to

definitively isolate Huesca.[58]

Given the strength of the fascists’ defences, the initial assault took

place under the cover of darkness. At four in the morning, sixty Shock

Battalion troops led by Reiter took the most northerly hillock in a

surprise attack after flinging hand bombs into the enemy trenches. In

the hand to hand fighting that ensued around forty Civil Guards were

later reported to have been killed. Conflicting reports in the POUM

press suggest that some of the enemy troops may have been eliminated

after having surrendered. Fascist sources, however, only speak of

thirteen losses and make no mention of any massacre.

Reinforced, the Shock Battalion troops held the captured position for

six hours before being forced to retreat as none of the other objectives

in the planned Republican operation had been taken, thus allowing the

fascists to bring up more troops and use artil ery and aerial

bombardments to retake the hillock. Enemy infantry had used 12,000 rifle

cartridges, ninety grenades and a hundred mortar bombs before taking the

position at bayonet point. Promised Republic aerial support failed to

materialise.[59]

The withdrawal, across open ground to the POUM trenches proved costly

with at least twenty five of the Battalion being killed and another

sixty-five wounded. According to fascist sources there were around fifty

Republican dead, including five who were taken prisoner and executed.

Among the dead were British, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Moroccan

and Catalan volunteers. The Battalion’s heroism was lauded in the POUM’s

press and a parade at the funeral of those killed, was addressed, by

among others, a German member of the Lenin Division’s General Staff,

Josef Halm and the Rumanian Political Commissar Sebastian Wisner.[60]

Early morning on 13 April, to relieve pressure on the Ascaso Division

attacking to the north, seventy Shock Brigade troops, mostly Germans,

were involved in a night time raid on the lines in front of the Ermita

Salas to the east of Huesca —an action that is graphically described by

Orwell in Homage to Catalonia.

Fifteen members of the ILP Contingent, including Orwell, also took part,

along with other troops from the 3^(rd) Regiment’s 2^(nd) Battalion

commanded by Gregorio Jorge («Jorge Roca»). It would be the only action

the ILP Contingent participated in and could only be considered a minor

success. The Shock Battalion was unable to take the position allotted to

it due to heavy enemy fire. A few arms were captured and there were

reports of fascist casualties. Most tragically a dozen JCI members

remained trapped in no-man’s land throughout the following day. Only one

made it back alive.[61]

The 29th Division

Meanwhile the campaign against the POUM, accused by the Stalinists of

being in league with the enemy, continued unabated and formed the

backdrop to the fighting that broke out in Barcelona in early May.[62]

Around seventy POUM militiamen, mostly from the Shock Battalion, had

already been sent to Barcelona to protect party premises.[63]

They were joined by Orwell and a small group of ILP volunteers, who were

on leave. At least nine of this group, including Orwell, had hoped to

pass over to the International Brigades as some other POUM foreign

volunteers had already done.66 What they witnessed in Barcelona would

convince most of them that they could not abandon the POUM when it was

being slandered and physically attacked.

When news of the fighting reached the front it caused a wave of

indignation but, contrary to what has been claimed, POUM troops did not

abandon the trenches to go to Barcelona.67 Instead, Rovira, with «a

strong escort» of Shock Battalion soldiers went to Binefar to

investigate. On the way, at Sietamo, «several hundred» soldiers from the

CNT’s 28^(th) Division joined them. The CNT troops were persuaded to

wait in Binefar, where they clashed with local forces. Meanwhile Rovira

went with 28^(th) Division commanders Máximo Franco and Miguel García

Vivancos to Lleida where they met with Coronel Alfonso Reyes, PSUC

member and commander of the sector’s air force and Joaquim Vilar, the

Catalan Government’s Commissar of Public Order in the province. An

agreement was reached that the CNT troops would return to the front,

while at the same time all government forces would be withdrawn from

outside the CNT and POUM offices in the province.[64]

In the coming weeks repression against the most radical sectors of the

workers’ movement increased with widespread arrests69 and the closing

down of newspapers and offices. The POUM was blamed for having organized

the «May putsch». Communist ap-peals for the «Trotskyists» to be

suppressed, if not physical y annihilated, became even more strident. To

this backdrop an offensive on Huesca was final y organised as part of a

broader plan to take pressure off Bilbao. Twenty thousand troops, eight

thousand of which, including the XII International Brigade, had been

brought up from the Central zone, supported by 18 artil ery batteries

and 150 planes, were deployed. Rebel forces in and around Huesca

numbered some 10,000.

Considered untrustworthy by the Communist commanders of the Ejército del

Este, the POUM’s 29^(th) Division was initial y al otted a secondary

role in the offensive. At 04.00 hours on 12 June the 2^(nd) Batallion of

the Division’s 129^(th) Mixed Brigade launched a diversion-ary assault

on the Manicomio (psychiatric hospital) and the nearby ridge. Given the

superior firepower of the entrenched defenders the attack was beaten

back, with, according to the fascists, the POUM forces suffering heavy

casualties.70 With the initial failure of the offensive to cut the road

to Jaca and complete the encirclement of Huesca, a new plan of attack

was drawn up which included a direct assault on 15 June at 01.00 by the

POUM’s Shock Battalion on the heavily fortified Loma Verde (Green Ridge)

immediately to the north of the city.

Aware of the imminence of the attack, the fascists concentrated heavy

artil ery fire and air strikes on the sector, forcing the Battalion to

retreat.[65]

Early the fol owing morning, on the very day the POUM was illegalised in

the rearguard and its leaders arrested, two companies from the 129^(th)

Mixed Brigade’s 4^(th) Battalion took by surprise the fascists’

strategical y important Number One Position situated on the Loma de las

Martires to the east of the Loma Verde. The two Companies were joined by

more troops from the 4^(th) and Shock Battalions, volunteers from the

128^(th) Mixed Brigade and a company of sappers. Four Companies of

Assault Guards (Republican paramilitary police), believed at the time to

have been sent to control the POUM’s «suspect» troops, were kept in

reserve. The capturing of the Loma de las Martires proved to be one of

the few objectives taken during the offensive and the closest that

Republican forces ever got to Huesca. Given the position was exposed to

fascist machine gun and artil ery fire from its flanks (Loma Verde and

Loma del Manicomio) it is probable that an attack was not expected on

the Loma de las Martires. With the failure of the offensive elsewhere,

the fascists could concentrate their firepower on the taken position.

Artil ery and air bombardment and re-peated assault by fascist troops,

including Moroccan and Foreign Legion units, gradual y wore down the

defenders. Repeated calls for air or artil ery support from Rovira

brought few results. After holding out for three days the 29^(th)

Division troops were given the order to retreat. The fascist forces had

used 100,000 cartridges and suffered heavy casualties in retaking the

position.[66] Retreating the POUM militia was exposed to withering fire.

It is unknown how many international volunteers were among the three

hundred troops that lost their lives. One of the dead was the head of

the 29^(th) Division’s General Staff Camil o Lanzilotta, who probably

had been sent to help evacuate the besieged militia after the 129^(th)

Mixed Brigade’s commander Amadeu Cahue had been killed.[67]

General Sebastian Pozas, Commander of the Army of the East,

congratulated Rovira on «the courage and brilliant behaviour» of the

forces under his command. Such congratulations were short lived and the

29^(th) Division was withdrawn from the front line pending its

dissolution. Shock Battalion troops nearly clashed with PSUC forces when

they were sent to seize the 29^(th) Division’s Transport Depot in Velil

as. The taking of some of the POUM officers as hostages forced the Shock

Battalion to surrender. The 29^(th) Division was formal y disbanded on

17 July. Rovira and some other officers had already been arrested. Many

of the former POUM Division fought on until the end of the war in other

units.[74]

Repression and counterrevolution

With the suppression of the POUM and the dissolution of the 29^(th)

Division the fate of its foreign volunteers was mixed. Those who were

not arrested either left Spain or were integrated into other units,

including the International Brigades.[68]

It has been possible to identify seventy foreign volunteers, forty of

them German, who were arrested after the May events and in the weeks

following the illegalisation of the POUM and the dissolution of the

29^(th) Division. Most of the party’s foreign collabora-tors in the

rearguard were also detained. The KPD’s Defence organisation (KPD

Abwehr) played a decisive role in this repression, drawing up reports on

the POUM’s German contingent and participating in interrogations along

with Spanish police and NKVD agents.

«Trotskyists», in the context of the Stalinist terror in the USSR, were

automatically considered to be fascist agents and spies. Included in

this category were all communists and left socialists who were critical

of the official Communist Parties. Members of the KPD(O) in particular

were singled out as «Gestapo agents» «spies» and «terrorists».

However, the Communists aim to launch a Moscow style purge in the

Republican zone was undermined by their lack of total control over the

state. Soviet foreign policy still aimed at forging an alliance with the

Western democracies. Complete control of the 74. COLL, op.cit, p198;

Guarner later testified to the 29 Division’s «splendid conduct» in their

defence of the Loma de la Martires, Proceso op.cit. p410; on the

dissolution of the 29^(th) Division see: «Informe de las divisiones 25,

26, 28 y 29 del Ejercito del Este, presentan al Subsecretario de Tierra,

del Ministro de Defensa Nacional, para su resolución en justicia» Azlor

(Huesca) unsigned 3.7.37, Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo. The JCI’s

clandestine paper Juventud Obrera regularly carried obituaries to its

fallen comrades on different fronts also see the manifesto «Les

combatants du POUM a la clase ouvière mondiale» Les Combattants du POUM

(Front du Le-vant, Front de l’Est, Front d’Estremadura, Front du Centre,

julliet 1938) (Biblioteca de la Republica, Barcelona).

Republic was not in Stalin’s interests. Even though hundreds of POUM

members were imprisoned, and several dozen, including Andreu Nin and

Kurt Landau murdered, the actual mechanisms of repression proved

contradictory if not inefficient.

Although there is no further trace of some of the foreign volunteers who

were arrested only one, Bob Smillie, is known to have died in suspicious

circumstances. Political Commissar of the ILP Contingent, Smillie was

detained when crossing the border on 11 May. Imprisoned in Valencia, he

died on 11 June, supposedly due to appendicitis, for which he had not

received treatment.[69] Of the POUM’s foreign militia who were arrested

most were accused of treason, often of being agents of the Gestapo or

the OVRA. But few were actually sentenced. An exception was Gaston

Ladmirall of the French Socialist Party who was sentenced to death but

finally expelled from Spain after the intervention of the French

Consulate. Walter Schwarz, despite being accused of high treason, was

only sentenced to six years imprisonment. He later escaped.

The international campaign of solidarity organised by the IBRSU also put

pressure on the Republican authorities. Three international delegations

of prominent European labour leaders and lawyers, headed by ILP MPs,

visited Barcelona in the months following the illegalisation of the

POUM. Foreign prisoners, including former anarchist and POUM militia,

launched a hunger strike in November 1937 to draw attention to their

plight.[70]

Some of those detained were released after a few weeks and expelled from

the country. Others after being released were even reintegrated into the

army. Among those released was Reiter who, despite being described by

the KPD Abwehr as a «Gestapo agent and terrorist», finished the war with

the rank of Major and as commander of the 97 Mixed Brigade.[71] The rest

remained imprisoned, and were either expelled during 1938 or, like the

POUM leadership held in Barcelona’s Modelo Prison, managed to escape

just before the fascists entered the city on 26 January 1939. A handful

went into hiding and secretly crossed the border in the following

months.

A case apart was Georges Kopp, who was arrested on 20 June accused of

being an enemy agent. According to Orwell, Kopp had travelled to the

rear in order to transfer to another unit. What Orwell was unaware of is

that Kopp appears to have been appointed to the General Staff of the XII

International Brigade, with the rank of Captain. He may well have

already joined his new unit as he told Orwell he had been fighting

around Chimillas, where the XII had seen action the days before Kopp

arrived in Barcelona. It is also strange, given the accusations being

directed at the POUM, that Kopp, who had been one of its militia’s

leading officers, would be accepted onto the Brigade’s General

Staff.[72] His sud-den arrest could well have been due to the

denunciation by a British volunteer Frank Frankford that Kopp had

maintained contacts with the enemy at the front.[73] Another former

militiaman who gave evidence against the POUM was the Swiss Emile

Bannhart who was arrested for spying in October 1937 and subsequently

denounced the POUM of forming part of the Fifth Column. He was freed in

January 1939.[74]

Kopp would later claim to have been interrogated twenty-seven times in

one hundred and thirty-five hours by Russian agents. When he refused to

sign a statement saying the POUM were spies, according to Kopp, he was

put in a coal hole full of rats for twelve days with no food and told he

would be shot. He was released in December 1938 without charges and

without a judge’s order. It remains unclear whether this was due to the

intervention of the Belgian authorities, international solidarity or to

other, as yet unknown, factors.[75]

Kopp’s case highlighted the poor conditions in which anti-fascist

prisoners were held in makeshift jails and Chekas. Subjected to

particularly bad treatment were the members of the Trotskyist

«Bolshevik-Leninist» group falsely accused of murdering the Polish NKVD

agent Leon Narwicz in February 1938. Two former POUM militiamen, the

Italian Trotskyists Domenico Sedran and Luigi Zannon were among those

tortured.[76]

Not a single case of espionage was proven. The only possible spies known

to have been in the POUM’s ranks probably worked for the Communists,

such as was the case with David Wickes, who was with the ILP’s medical

services or the Germans Martin Schneider and Werner Schwarze.[77] One

exception was the mysterious Vinzenz Eberle, who may have been with the

POUM’s Cavalry, who was later accused of being a Gestapo agent by the

KPD Abwehr; but despite being arrested three times between 1937 and 1938

he was always released.[78]

The struggle continues

With the Republic defeated and the advent of the Second World War, many

of the former international volunteers faced a new period of great

uncertainty. A few Jewish volunteers stayed on in Spain, fearing that

exile would only lead them to a certain death.

This was the case for instance of the doctor Charlotte Margolin and

Reinhold Hoffmann, who had also served as an officer in the

International Brigades.[79]

Many of those from countries with authoritarian regimes were imprisoned,

along with tens of thousands of Republican combatants, in appalling

conditions in the concentration camps hurriedly established by a hostile

French government. Most were sent to the camps in Argelès-sur-Mer or

Gurs where 6,808 International Brigade combatants were held. Even in

their common suffering, the Stalinist campaign against the «Trotskyist

fascists» continued unabated. In Gurs former POUM combatants joined with

anarchist prisoners in opposition to the Communist dominance of the

camp.

With the German occupation of France, the plight of the former

volunteers wors-ened. Often those who had avoided the camps, and were

living precariously in France, were now rounded up. Most of the Italians

were expatriated to prisons in Italy, particularly on the islands of

Ventotene and Tremeti. Others, especially those of Jewish origin, were

sent to Nazi concentration camps where they invariably perished; as was

the case with the Germans Herbert Büchner, the SAPD member Franz

Gerstner and the Trotskyist Rudolf Steffens, the Austrian Oswald

Wilhelm, the Belgian Trotskyist Pierre Schavitz, the Dutch RSAP militant

Theo Van Driesten and the Italian Trotskyist Guido Lionello, who died

days after being liberated from Dachau. Others, like the Austrian Franz

Ortner, the Belgian Trotskyists Florent Galloy, Camille Loots and Pierre

Wouwermans, the French Trotskyist Georges Fournié and the Italian

Bordigists Gildo Belfiore and Emilio Lionello survived the camps.

Other former POUM combatants, having escaped detention, joined the

resistance, first in France, Holland and Belgium and later with the

partisans in Italy. In France, the Austrian Rosa Winkler and the

Italians Duilio Balduni and Giuseppe Bogoni, all PSMI members, formed

part of the Fédérer et libérer resistance group. Gaston Ladmirall

entered the resistance in 1941 and took part in the uprising in Paris in

August 1944, as did the Bordigist Mario Bramati, who died in the

fighting. The Trotskyists Pavel Thalmann and Guido Lionello also

participated in the French resistance. In Holland various RSAP members

who had fought with the POUM joined the resistance. PSMI member Estrucco

Benci worked with the Trotskyist Domenico Sedran in the Belgian

resistance. Benci was executed with two hundred other resistance

fighters in January 1943. Many former POUM combatants freed from the

Italian camps in 1943 joined the partisans or took part in the

re-organisation of workers’ movement in the liberated zone.

Former British and American militiamen joined their respective armies;

as did some of those who had managed to go into exile.[80] Benjamin

Lewinski deserted from the Foreign Legion in Lebanon and joined the Free

French Forces in Palestine. He went on to fight in North Africa, Italy

and France. Hans Reiter, after passing through the terrible Morand

prison camp in North Africa, also joined the Free French forces,

becoming a sergeant in the famous 9^(th) Company of General Philippe

Leclerc’s 2^(nd) Armoured Division in which he distin-guished himself in

combat. On 24 August 1944 he was in command of the first of the 9^(th)’s

halftracks to reach the Hotel de Ville. He later went with Leclerc to

Indo China.

Georges Kopp, having returned to France from Britain in 1939, fought

with the Foreign Legion. With the fall of France, after escaping from

the Germans, he supposedly worked on making for petrol for the Vichy

Regime, which he subsequently offered to the MI15. Kopp conditioned his

collaboration on the basis of the British Secret Service send-ing him

funds to pay off debts. In 1943 reports suggest he was by then working

for MI5, albeit his exact relationship with them is unclear.[81]

With the end of the Second World War, many former POUM volunteers

returned to political and trade union activities[82] pre-war trades or

in a few cases, revived their ca-reers as writers and artists. Orwell,

after enlisting in the Home Guard and working for the BBC during the

war, now established himself as one of the world’s foremost writers.

Jean Malaquais (Malacki) published his famous novel Plànete sans visa

about exile in Mar-seille during the war. Karl Heidenreich returned to

painting, winning the 1961 Watercol-our Prize. Benjamin Peret and Olga

Loeuillet (Monskheli Preiss) remained active in the Surrealist

movement.[83]

There is, however, no trace of scores of the former POUM international

volunteers after 1939. War and repression had taken its toll. They and

the cause they served deserve to be saved from oblivion.

[1] It has been estimated that a third of the International Brigaders

died ÁLVAREZ, S., Historia política y military de las Brigadas

Internacionales (Madrid 1996) pp398-399; around a hundred of the POUM

foreign contingent fell in combat according to Victor ALBA, El Marxismo

en España (1919–1939) tomo II (Mexico 1973) p369.

[2] . La Vanguardia 24.7.36; Avant! 26.7.36; the Column was initially

commanded by Jordi Arquer and the Asturian miners’ leader Manuel Grossi,

with a former army sergeant Francesc Piquer as military advisor. Three

more POUM columns would leave from Barcelona over the coming month: on

29 July, 8 August and 29 August; there were also two more columns

organised from Lleida; columns from Tarragona, Castelló and Valencia

left for the Teruel front.

[3] On the IBRSU see DURGAN, A., Comunismo, revolución y movimiento

obrero en Cataluña 1920–1936. Los origins del POUM (Barcelona 2016)

pp311-314.

[4] The SAPD had split in 1931 with the SPD over its support of the

right wing government and its failure to build a workers’ united front

against fascism.

[5] The KPD(O)’s founding members had been expelled in 1928 from the KPD

as supporters of Nickolai Bukharin; they also defended the need for an

anti-fascist united front; under the im-pact to the Spanish Civil War

they would evolve towards a militant anti Stalinism and in 1938 join the

IBRSU. In Barcelona the largely Jewish KPD(O) group gravitated, like

other refugees not associated with the KPD, around the kiosk in the

Plaça Catalunya selling anti-fascist literature, ran by the KPD(O)

members Ewald and Ella König.

[6] The Italian journalist and PSMI member, Bruno Sereni, who had lived

in Catalonia since 1933 working as a door to door salesman, was badly

wounded and became the POUM’s first foreign casualty; see his memoirs,

SERENI,B., Ricordi della Guerra di Espagne (Barga 1972).

[7] STANSKY, P. and ABRAHAMS, W., Journey to the Frontier. Two roads to

the Spanish Civil War (Bos-ton 1966) pp311-346; F. Borkenau, The Spanish

Cockpit (University of Michigan 1974) p108.

[8] Brodiga had been one of the founders of the PCI in 1921; in 1926 he

split with his supporters from the party. His political programme

centred on a rejection of the concept of «socialism in one country» and

any suggestion that there was any difference between liberal democracy

and fascism, both were forms of bourgeois dominance. Hence his faction

rejected «antifascism» as only strengthening capitalism. In contrast,

they defended the founding programme of the Comintern and the need to

struggle against all forms of opportunism. By the thirties most of the

Faction were in exile in Belgium and France and no longer in contact

with Bordiga himself, who, after a period in prison, had withdrawn from

all political activity.

[9] Trotsky had broken with his former Spanish followers who after

joining with the Workers and Peasants Bloc to form the POUM in September

1935 had signed the Popular Front electoral pact in early 1936; for a

critical appraisal of Trotsky’s relations with the POUM see A. DURGAN

«Marxism, War and Revolution: Trotsky and the POUM» Revolutionary

History vol. 9, nº2 (London 2006).

[10] Russo was a sergeant in the Italian Army during the First World War

and later a leading member of the Bordigist faction in exile.

[11] The former anarchist militiaman Pedro Torralba praised the courage

and efficiency of the POUM militia in defending the «most difficult and

dangerous» sectors of the front, TORRALBA, P., De Ayerbe a la Roja y

Negra (Edición del autor, 1980) pp146-7; Alba described Casestas de

Quicena, where the International Group was situated, as the «most

dangerous part of the front», ALBA op. cit. p369; the commander of the

attacking fascists Coronel Alfonso Beorlegui described the morale of the

defenders of Casetas de Quicena as «extremely high», ARCARAZO, L.A.,

BARRACHIN, P. and MARTINEZ, F., Guerra civil Aragón. Huecas ‘el cerco’

Zaragoza 2007 p151; the POUM would later claim they suffered six hundred

casualties at the front during September 1936, Front (Terrassa) 28.5.37.

[12] Among the international volunteers killed was the nineteen-year-old

Franz Maizan , former member of the Austrian socialist militia the

Schutzbund.

[13] Vil alba was commander of the barracks in Barbastro; it is unclear

to what extent he was involved in the military plot, probably the

arrival POUM militia on 25 July tipped him in favour of the Republic,

MALDONADO, J.M., El frente de Aragón. La guerra civil en Aragón

(1936–1938) (Zaragoza 2007) pp83, 106, 132; BENITO, M., Orwell en las

tierras de Aragón (Sariñena 2009) pp19-20.

[14] ALBA, op. cit. p369 says there were 500 by January; the former POUM

militiaman Albert Masó believed that there were never more than 400 at

any one time, letter to author 20.11.97; another POUM leader Carmel Rosa

states there were 300 foreigners with the POUM militia, ROSA, C., Quan

Catalunya era revolucionaria (I feia la guerra) (Girona 2008) p339; a

German militiaman reported that foreigners made up 10% of the POUM

militia, BUSCHAK, W., «El POUM y el movimiento obrero internacional»

n.d.

[15] Apart from Cornford, four young French Communists also joined the

POUM Column in September 1936, three of whom would be killed in the

fighting round Quicena; the Italian anarchists Giuseppe Borgo, Pasquale

Fioravanti and Mario Traverso formed part of the Lenin International

Group.

[16] For example the brothers Gottfried and Rudolf Kahn, German Jewish

exiles who joined the POUM by pure chance, see the novelised account of

their time in Spain, SIMONS, P.L., Brothers on the run. Fleeing Hitler,

Fighting Franco (North Charleston 2013).

[17] This information is based on multiple sources including: the POUM,

IBRSU and Trotskyist press; AUSIN HERVELLA, J.L., «Milicians del poum

-segons dades de microfilms de l’ANC»

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag5WfxlaP_otX2T9tUiurHf5gyS2AAj5vC5IT_bv3oU/edit?hl=es&pli=1;

ABEL, W. y HILBERT, E., «Sie werden nicht durchkommen» Deustche an der

Seite der Spanischen Republik und der sozialen Revolution (Auflage

2015); Associazione Italiano Combattenti Volontari Antifascista di

Spagna (AICVAS), La Spagna nel nostro cuore 1936–1939. Tre anni di

storia da non dimenticare Roma 1996

http://www.aicvas.org/006-Memorie.htm#cuore; Nederlandse vrijwilligers

in de Spaanse Burgeroorlog https://spanjestrijders.nl/user; HALL, C., In

Spain with Orwel . George Orwell and the Independent Labour Party

Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War (Perth 2013); Le Maitron.

Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français (1964–1997);

additional information has been located in the CDHM (Salamanca) and the

International Brigades’ Archive (RGASPI).

[18] Orwell says there were «several hundred Germans serving with the

POUM», ORWELL, G., Orwell in Spain (London 2001) p67.

[19] AUSIN HERVILLA, J.L., op. cit. ; apart from members of the Gauche

revolutionnaire, the French volunteers included militants from the two

Trotskyist parties, the Parti ouvrier internationaliste and the

dissident Parti Communiste Internationaliste.

[20] DE BEULE, N., «Met de loupe op zoek naar de Belgische Trotskisten

in de Spaanse arena« (1987)

http://www.journalbelgianhistory.be/en/system/files/article_pdf/BTNG-RBHC,%2018,%201987,%201–2,%20pp%20399–417.pdf

[21] Often described as the «French Orwell», Malacki had emigrated to

France in 1925. His first, and highly acclaimed, novel Les Javanais was

based on his experiences as a miner; written in 1935 it was not

published until 1939, when it won the Renaudot prize.

[22] Peret had been one of the founders of the surrealist movement in

France and had later become a Trotskyist.

[23] Heindereich had been delegate to the Munich Workers’ and Soldiers’

Council in 1918. With the Nazi rise to power, three hundred of his

paintings were destroyed as «degenerate art».

[24] GOVAERTS, B., «George Kopp: De vreemde voetnoot in een beroemd

leven» Vrij Nederland 24.8.85; B. Govaerts, «Comandante Georges Kopp

(1902–1951). De Belgische vriend van George Orwel» (2007); WILDEMEERSCH,

M., George Orwel ’s Commander in Spain. The Enigma of Georges Kopp

(London 2010).

[25] Alvarez organised the POUM militia’s first sapper unit.

[26] Hartmut was an officer with the POUM’s artillery.

[27] Girelli, a bricklayer from Brescia, went to Madrid with the 2^(nd)

Battalion of the Joaquin Maurin Column in October 1936 in command of the

pontoon unit.

[28] Moner commanded a Centuria in the Joaquin Maurin Column in Tierz.

[29] Lewinski was Jewish and had emigrated with his family to Paris in

1925; he was only twenty years old (he claimed he was 24) when he was

handed his command by Kopp in November 1936.

[30] Schwarz, a KPD(O) member, had gone to Barcelona in 1932 and was

secretary of the POUM in the neighbourhood of Gràcia.

[31] Margolin was author in 1923 of an influential study, based on her

Doctoral Thesis, on the be-havior of the nervous system of carcinoma

patients.

[32] After the Civil War, Fienga went to Mexico where he became the

personal physician of both President Lazaro Cardenas and Leon Trotsky.

[33] According to Avant! 25.7.36. the POUM’s first Column was equipped

with a medical service of two ambulances, two doctors, four medical

orderlies three nurses and six stretcher bearers; direct testimonies

considered the POUM’s medical services to be very precarious: ORWELL

op.cit p282; GROSSI, M., Cartas de Grossi (Sariñena 2009) pp57-8;

LAUFER, E., «A German Communist in the Spanish Civil War» What Next?

No.13, 1999.

[34] Thalmann had gone to Spain, where she was joined by her partner

Pavel Thalmann, as part of the Swiss Workers’ Swimming Club to take part

in the Popular Olympics.

[35] According to the POUM, Zimbal «fought like a man, she aimed her

rifle and fired without rest, impassive to the fascist bullets.. she

constantly exposed herself in order to rescue the wounded.. She was the

prototype of the revolutionary woman.. feminine but strong, brave,

heroic..»

Front (Sitges) 25.10.36; La Vanguardia 23.10.36; Spanish Revolution

2.12.36; also see CASTELLVÍ, O., De les txeques de Barcelona a

l’Alemanya nazi (Barcelona 2003) p41-43; according to the POUM daily La

Batal a about 100 women regularly took part in these training sessions,

La Batalla 8.1.37.

[36] For example according to José Mª Maldonado the POUM «fled from

traditional discipline and obeying either military or civilian

commanders « MALDONADO op.cit p38. On the POUM military policy see

TOSSTORFF, R., El POUM en la revoució espanyola (Barcelona 2009)

pp155-171; and the report from the POUM’s Military Conference in,

Lerida, 17–19 January 1937, La Batalla 23.1.37; 24.1.37.

[37] By early 1937 there were supposedly 42,466 men in the Republican

forces on the Aragón front, with 132 pieces of artillery; the rebel

5^(th) Division in April 1937 had 42,873 troops, 6,182 in the Huesca

sector, and 131 pieces of artillery, MALDONADO op. cit. pp143-145.

[38] Rovira was previously head of the POUM’s paramilitary self-defence

groups.

[39] ORWELL, op.cit pp318-320; according the Josep Pané, Political

Commissar in the POUM militia, the large presence of party members,

around 80% at first, reinforced discipline, COLL, J. and PANÉ, J., Josep

Rovira. Una vida al servei de Catalunya i del socialismo (Barcelona

1978) p114; the POUM press from very early on was full of calls to

improve discipline, for example «Instruc-ciones que se han dado a sí

mismas las milicias del POUM en campaña» La Batal a 8.8.36.

[40] «Three months on the Huesca Front», The Spanish Civil War. The view

from the Left, Revolutionary History Vol.4, Nos. 1/2, (London 1992);

Josep Guarner, Chief of Staff of the Army of Catalonia, when questioned

at the POUM leadership’s trial in November 1938, stated he was unaware

of any complaints about the fortifications in the positions occupied by

the party’s militia, El proceso del P.O.U.M. Documentos Judiciales y

Policiales (Barcelona 1989) p411; Orwell admitted that the lines were

often close in front of Huesca, ORWELL op. cit. p281; Front (Terrassa)

24.12.36. described the lines as being only fifty metres apart in front

of the Manicomio.

[41] Until late March the old denominations were still used; then the

Maurin Column became the 1^(st) Regiment, the Pedrola Column the 2^(nd)

and the JCI and Lobo the 3^(rd); for the distribution of the POUM forces

see: Cuartel General del Frente de Aragón. Estado Mayor, 3ª Sección

Sariñena, marzo 1937, «Operaciones. Plán de operaciones sobre Huesca»

AHM Caja 786, 2.

[42] «Líneas generales de la organización de las fuerzas que guarnecen

la región catalana» Documento 0297, Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo; a fascist

report in March 1937 claimed the Lenin Division consisted of 7,300 men,

with 80 machine guns, and eighteen pieces of artillery, 5ª División

Orgánica EM «Parte informativa correspondiente del día 22 de marzo de

1937» AHM Caja 2417,11.

[43] José Mª Maldonado estimates, given the lack of both men and

suitable arms and the strength of the enemy’s defences, it was «nearly

impossible» for the Republican forces on the Aragon front to take the

enemy’s positions, MALDONADO op.cit. p94; Waldemar Bozle makes a similar

point in «Three months..» op.cit. pp294-5;

[44] «Líneas generales de la organización de las fuerzas que guarnecen

la región catalana» Doc 0297, Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo ; MALDONADO

op.cit. pp511-513.

[45] MALDONADO, op.cit. pp169-170; 516–518; Vicenç Guarner stated he

never saw a Mixed Brigade that was complete at the front, GUARNER, V.,

Cataluña en la guerra de España (Madrid 1975) p.225.

[46] The 1^(st) and 3^(rd) Regiments combined to form the 128^(th) Mixed

Brigade and the 2^(nd) Regiment became the 129^(th).

[47] The ILP representative in Barcelona, John McNair claimed there were

two hundred inscribed to come, La Batalla 1.4.37.

[48] Most of this information can be found in HALL op. cit; in May 1937

Orwell was in charge of thirty «English and Spanish» militia, ORWELL

op.cit p50.

[49] LARGEAUD, B., La perception des volontaires britanniques de la

guerre ’Espagne, de la surveil ance à la redécouverte Université Paris

Sorbonne – Paris IV, UFR d’Histoire, September 2013 p114

[50] . Bilan 22.10.36.; for a detailed account of the crisis see

GUILLAMON, A., Documentación histöri-ca del trotquismo español

(1936–1948) (Madrid 1996); ROSES, S., Els revoulucionaris marxistes a

l’Espanya del anys 30, Tesi Doctoral, Facultat de Geografia i Historia

Contemporànea, Universi-tat de Barcelona, Maig de 2017, pp305-354.

[51] Russo signed on 28.1.37. for the receipt of his wages from 1.12.36.

to 15.1.37; ANC 1-1-T-6489/824; at least two other Bordigsts kept

fighting: Emilio Lionello; re-enlisted in the POUM militia in the Miguel

Pedrola Column, and returned to the front on 16.11.36., he signed on

7.1.37. for his wages for the period 16.11.36. to 31.11.36 ANC

1-1-T-6436/421-422; Gildo Belfiore later joined the International

Brigades, Associazione Italiano Combattenti Volontari Antifascista di

Spagna (AICVAS) La Spagna nel nostro cuore 1936–1939. Tre anni di storia

da non dimenticare Roma 1996 http://www.aicvas.org/006-Memorie.htm#cuore

[52] A fascist report described the Battalion being made up of

militiamen who were «well trained and well armed specially chosen

fanatics» «Informe sobre el ataque del día 17 del actual posición número

dos» 21.3.37. AHM 1299,53.

[53] These were made in a workshop in Lleida and «provoked a certain

admiration and respect» among the rest of the Lenin Division, COLL, op.

cit. p119; Grossi described the Battalion as the «the best dressed and

most disciplined unit at the front» GROSSI, op.cit. p99.

[54]

A. FORNER «El Batallón de Choque Rovira» Juventud Comunista 13.5.37;

according to Orwell the Germans «did not speak a word of English,

Franch or Spanish» ORWELL, op. cit. p83.

[55] The Battalion’s «heroism» would later be attested to by the CNT

militia leader Miguel Garcia Vivancos, «Informe» 21.7.37. FAL; The Dutch

volunteer Anton Van de Berg recalled that he was involved in a dozen or

so attacks as a member of the Battalion,

https://spanjestrijders.nl/bio/berg-toon-van-de

[56] GUARNER, op. cit. p259; the Official Communique of the Republican

Army 7.1.37. claimed the militia had captured a cannon, a machine gun, a

mortar, twenty rifles, 30 boxes of ammunition and five prisoners, and

the enemy had left fifty dead behind, Servicio Histórico Militar, Partes

Oficiales de Guerra: 1936–1939 vol. II (Madrid 1978) p.168. Militia the

dead included the Germans Adolf Hess (18 years old) and Rudolf Hable

(19); and the Swiss Gregor Bobilof (21); La Batalla 13.1.37; Impuls

26.3.37; HUBER, P., Los voluntarios suizos en la guerra civil española

Guadalajara 2011) p142.

[57] Among the dead was the SAPD member Ewald Linke; La Batalla 26.2.37;

2.3.37; Juventud Comunista 4.3.37; 20.5.37; Alerta 4.3.37.

[58] Cuartel General del Fente de Aragon. Estado Mayor, 3ª Sección,

Sariñena, marzo 1937, «Operaciones. Plán de operaciones sobre Huesca

(Marzo 1937)» AHM Caja 786,2.

[59] The POUM’s version of events can be found in: La Batalla 18.3.37;

20.3.37; 29.4.37.; Adelante 19.3.37; 2.4.37; the official Republican

version in Partes Oficiales.. op.cit vol. II, p248; L a Vanguardia

18.3.37; the fascist version in: Ejército del Norte. Quinta División,

«Parte del combate librado el día 17 de marzo de 1937 en Huesca» AHM

Caja 1315,34.; 5ª División Orgánica Estado Mayor, «Parte informativa

correspondiente del día 22 de marzo de 1937» AHM 2417,11.; also see

ARCARAZO, op.cit. pp238-239.

[60] The POUM figures can be found in: La Batalla 20.3.37; 21.3.37;

L’Espurna 9.4.37; Frente Proletario (1938); according to the fascists

the Battalion was «destroyed» losing at between 60 and 45 combatants,

including its commander Reiter, «Parte del combate.. » op.cit; «Parte

informativa..» 22.3.37. op.cit; «Información sobre el ataque enemigo del

17 de marzo 1937» AHM c1299, Cp53.

[61] ORWELL, op. cit. pp76-88; ARCARAZO, op.cit. p272; MALDONADO, p76;

COLL, op. cit pp146-147; GUARNER, op.cit. p265; Spanish Revolution

21.4.37; Adelante 16.4.37; La Batalla 14.4.37; 24.4.37.

[62] For instance, the PCE described the POUM as «the advance line of

fascism» in the Republican zone and called for its «extermination»,

Mundo Obrero 29.1.37 ; the XIV International Brigade newspaper claimed

that after the Moscow trial «the whole world can see» that the

Trotskyists were «agents of German-Japanese fascism... an incredible

system of provocations, sabotage and murder» and in Spain, they had been

revealed as «the artificial mist that hid Franco’s Fifth Column». The

«unmasking of the Trotskyists», it claimed, united all International

Brigade volunteers, Soldado de la República 16.2.37.

[63] ALBA, op.cit p406; according to the NKVD at least thirty-seven

foreign POUM militia were sent to take part in the May «putsch»,

30.6.37. RGASPI (Thanks to Peter Huber for providing a copy of this

information); Reiter was later accused by the KPD of having taken part

in May fighting at the head of a «twenty-strong unit of Shock troops»;

ABEL op.cit. p406.

[64] COLL, op.cit, pp163-173; BARULL, J., El Bloc Obrer I Camperol

(Lleida 1919–1937) (Lérida 1990) p.112; El proceso... op.cit pp 412,

494–6, 503–4, 511, 519; TORRABLA, op.cit pp115-116; BOZLE «Three

months... op.cit p. 289; «El Comité Executiu del POUM dona orders de que

no vinguin a Barcelona forces del front» Declaración 6.5.37.(Biblioteca

de la Republica, Barcelona); Adelante 7.5.37.

[65] Ejército de Este, Estado Mayor, «Orden General de Operaciones nº10»

13.6.37. AHM C581. 19/3; ARCARAZO, op.cit p314; ALBA, op.cit p537;

FERNÁNDEZ JURADO, R., Memòries d’un militant obrer (Barcelona 1987)

pp242-3; COLL, op.cit p178.

[66] 5º Cuerpo de Ejército, División 51 E.M. 2ª y 3ª Sección, «Ataques

realizados en el frente de la División en los días 12 al 19 de junio»

AHM Caja 2100,18.; «Jefe Estado Mayor del Ejército del Este al Jefe

Estado Mayor Central Coronel Rojo» 16.6.37. CDMH Incoporados 688;

Coronel Jefe Frente a Jefe Operaciones Estado Mayor Central – «Parte de

novedades del día 20 de junio 1937» Sariñena 20.6.37. CDMH Incorporados

688; Diario de Operaciones del Mehal-la Jalifiana del Rif nº5, AHM Caja

2682,21; COLL, op cit. pp189-200; ARCARAZO, op.cit. p305.

[67] Republican sources stated the POUM forces suffered 40% casualties,

Coronel Jefe Frente a Jefe Operaciones Estado Mayor Central – «Parte de

novedades del día 20 de junio 1937» Sariñena 20.6.37. CDMH Incorporados

688; Political Commissar Josep Pané, who took part in the fighting,

claimed they lost «half» of their troops, COLL, op. cit. p196; according

to Orwell «four to six hundred» were killed, ORWELL, op.cit, p288; the

JCI gave a figure of three hundred, Juventud Obrera 12.7.37.

[68] It has been possible to identify forty-four POUM volunteers who

served with the International Brigades. The Germans Karl

Schneider-Neuser, Walter Theis and Otto Töwe were considered suspicious

as former POUM militiamen and imprisoned by the Brigades.

[69] BUCHANAN, T., «The Death of Bob Smillie, the Spanish Civil War, and

the Eclipse of the Independent Labour Party» The Historical Journal Vol.

40, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 435–461; NEWSING-ER, J., «The Death of Bob

Smillie» The Historical Journal 41, 2, 1998, pp575-578.

[70] On the hunger strike see PAGÈS, P., La presó model de Barcelona.

Història d’un centre penitencia-ri en temps de Guerra (1936–1939)

(Barcelona 1996) pp389-390; on the delegations and of prisoners’

conditions: La Batal a 11.9.37; 25.9.37; 2.10.37; 20.12.37; 6.1.38; «The

Red Aid of the POUM» Report of the Foreign Delegation of the POUM in

Paris, August 1938 (Biblioteca del Pavelló de la Republica, Barcelona).

[71] RGASPI Opis 6/359; on Reiter and the 97^(th) Mixed Brigade see:

CDMH, PEST 329, Exp 21392, Fol 2; CDMH, PEST 337, Exp 21934, Fol 2.

[72] Kopp as «Capitán, Estado Mayor, XII Brigada Internacional»,

Albacete 7.7.37. (CDMH Serie Militar, Carpeta 1061–2, Fol 92) and

17.7.37. (CDMH Serie Militar, Carpeta 1061–3 [no fol]); on Kopp and the

fighting around Chimillas: ORWELL op.cit. p325

[73] Frankford had been arrested with another member of the ILP

contingent, James Cope, for stealing paintings. Franford’s accusations

were widely reported in the Communist and International Brigade press,

for example: Daily Worker 14.6.37, 16.6.37; The Volunteer for Liberty

13.9.37; SORIA, G., Trotskyism in the Service of Franco (London 1938)

pp.40–42; Frankford very belatedly admitted he had lied: J. Meyers

«Repeating the old lies» The New Criterion 1999

http://www.orwell.ru/a_life/Spanish_War/english/e_olies

[74] HUBER, P., Los voluntarios suizos en la guerra civil española

(Guadlajara 2011) pp125-127.

[75] ORWELL, op.cit. pp324-325; WILDEMEERSCH op. cit. pp63-66; «El nuevo

crimen que se prepara; Jorge Kopp» La Batalla 6.11.37. Solidaridaridad

Internacional Comité de Ayuda del POUM (Paris) n/d. (1938) says he was

released he on 20 December.

[76] Narwicz, an officer in the International Brigades, had infiltrated

the POUM posing as a Russian dissident; he was executed by a POUM action

squad in revenge for death of Nin, GUILLAMON, A., El terror estalinista

en Barcelona 1938 ( Barcelona 2013) pp269-301; Zannon, whose parents

were Italian, was born in Barcelona.

[77] BOWKER, G., George Orwell (London 2003) p220; Schneider was a

deputy in Reichstag in 1924 and later a Soviet citizen, he was later

denounced by the KPD Abwehr as a «Gestapo» agent and of having

«probably» been in the POUM militia, he disappeared in 1938, ABEL,

op.cit, p454; Swarze was supposedly an agent of the KPD in the Cadre

Commission of the PSUC and worked inside the «International Battalion»

of the POUM, ibíd p470.

[78] Eberle disappeared in July 1939 after supposedly reporting to the

German Embassy in Paris; ABEL, op.cit. , p127.

[79] Margolin was arrested for eight days by the Francoist police in

June 1940, after which there is no trace of her; Hoffmann was arrested

in 1943; subsequently released he went to live in Italy in 1946. Another

former POUM volunteer the Pole Abraham Lichten was listed among five

thousand Jews in the Barcelona capital in 1945,

http://www.mozaika.es/el-exilio-judeoasquenazi-en-barcelona-1933-1945-un-rompecabezas-que-pide-ser-resuelto/;

http://pares.mcu.es/Pares-Busquedas/servlets/Control_servlet.

[80] The German Adolph Bresmann fought with the French Foreign Legion

and eventually the British Army in North Africa; RSAP member Theo

Jansen, after escaping from the Nazi labour organisation Todt in Norway,

enlisted in the Dutch Princess Irene Brigade of the British Army;

Wladamir Malacki and Giuseppe Pizzala also joined the French Army at the

beginning of the war.

[81] Once more the evidence about Kopp is highly contradictory, see

WILDEMEERSCH, op. cit., pp77-90.

[82] For example Peter Blachstein returned to SPD and was a member of

German Budestag from 1949 to 1968; the former leader of the ILP

Contingent Bob Edwards was a Labour MP from 1955 till 1987.

[83] For example Surrealisme, art moderne et art contemporain.

Collection Olga Preiss Loeuil et 1907–2002 (París 2005).