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p General Franco, who led the revolt against the Spanish Republic, represented reactionary forces of the very same kind that in February 1934 had destroyed in Austria the last vestiges _of democracy, relying, like him, on the support of foreign fascist powers. On February 12, 1934, the workers of Austria tried to put up armed resistance to the advance of fascism. But the Schutzbund  [40•1  detachments and also the Communists who fought with them were weakened by the fact that the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party and the trade unions did not participate in the struggle. The uprising was defeated and the Communist and Social-Democratic parties banned. Yet the workers’ fighting spirit was not broken. When the great battle against fascism flared up in Spain, many Austrian anti-fascists, and particularly those who had taken part in the February fighting of 1934, saw it as a long-awaited chance of again taking up arms to defeat fascism—this time on Spanish soil. They joined the ranks of the fighters of the International Brigades.

p “Learn from Spain!" was the title of an article about the Spanish events published in the March issue (1936) of Rote Fahne—the central organ of the Communist Party of Austria. The paper stressed the vital importance of the unity of action achieved between the Socialist and Communist parties of Spain on the basis of the revolutionary struggle against fascism, because it had become “the central factor that has united all true democrats and friends of freedom in a single anti-fascist Popular Front”. The significance of the Popular Front in Spain, the role of unity, were also understood by some of the Social-Democrats.

p On July 11, 1936, a week before the Franco generals’ putsch, the Chancellor of Austria Schuschnigg concluded an agreement with Hitler. As the Austrian Communist Party’s theoretical 41 magazine Weg und Ziel noted in March 1937, while formally recognising the state independence of Austria, German fascism used this agreement to gain virtual control of its foreign policy. The plans that Germany and Italy had by that time already worked out for Spain had made it necessary to obtain as soon as possible a modus vivendi in respect of Austria.

p When General Franco, who was acting in collusion with the fascist powers, attacked the Spanish Republic, bourgeois Austria took the side of the insurgents. Admittedly, the Austrian Government officially declared its non-intervention in Spanish affairs, but the bourgeois press from the first days of the fascist revolt set out to smear the Spanish Republic. In mid-August 1936 the government-inspired newspaper Weltblatt expressed its indignation that "in the last few days some papers have been publishing in a more or less veiled form statements expressing sympathy for the Popular Front”, and demanded an effort to find "ways and means of putting a stop to this”. For publishing truthful reports from Spain on the situation at the fronts the Vienna bourgeois-liberal newspaper Tag was fined by the Polizeiprasidium five hundred schillings and given a warning.

p Information on Austrian military aid to Franco—for understandable reasons, far from complete—appeared only in the illegal working-class press. For example, the newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung reported on September 4, 1936 that the Vienna firm Graf und Stift had sold the insurgents a consignment of 40 tanks and loaded them in Trieste for shipment to Spain. On November 19, 1936, the bulletin Pressedienst der Roten Fahne wrote: “We are informed by reliable sources that at the arms factory in Hirtenberg they are working three shifts of eight hours each. Forty per cent of the output goes to the Spanish insurgents. Ammunition is being sent to Portugal through the Hamburg transport firm Mathias Rothe.”

p The Austrian Government also facilitated recruitment of Austrians for Franco’s army. The insurgent troops included Austrian nazis recruited in Austria itself as well as those who went to Germany and enlisted there in the Condor Legion. The Pressedienst der Roten Fahne of December 23, 1936 reported that on the initiative of the Aktion katholischer Adeliger (Aristocratic Catholic Action) nearly 200 Austrians joined the insurgent army in Spain. An officer of the fascist Heimwehr from Innsbruck Rudolf Penz returned from Spain to Austria to enlist new mercenaries there. Every recruit received 100 schillings and a free railway ticket (to Genoa, rest of the journey by ship), and in addition the members of his family were presented with a life insurance policy.

p Big industrialists and financiers were approached to contribute funds to purchase arms for the insurgents.

p Most of the 1,700 anti-fascist Austrians who fought in Spain arrived direct from Austria. Many of them had acquired the 42 rudiments of military training in the Schutzbund detachments and in the Communist worker self-defence groups; those who had participated in the street battles of February 1934 had a certain amount of fighting experience.

p As soon as the Spanish people rose up in arms, many of the Schutzbund fighters, who after the suppression of the February uprising had found political asylum in the Soviet Union, hastened to their aid.

p The overwhelming majority of the Austrian volunteers were members of the Austrian Communist Party or the Communist League of Youth; there were also Revolutionary Socialists  [42•1  and non-party people from Austria in the International Brigades.

p Doctor Julius Deutsch (a member of the Board of the SocialDemocratic Workers’ Party, in the past a leader of the Schutzbund, who arrived in Spain from emigration in Czechoslovakia and soon became a general of the Republican Army) wrote in the newspaper of the International Brigades Le volontaire de la Liberte: “In this great struggle it has come about of itself that the contradictions that up to now existed between anti-fascists have disappeared. Whether a man was in the past a Socialist or a Communist, here in Spain it is of no significance, which is something that would be hard to imagine in the rest of Europe."  [42•2 

p Of course, some disagreements and difficulties arose between Communists and Socialists when it came to taking practical action. Serious contradictions appeared after the POUM putsch in Barcelona in May 1937 over the question of the attitude to be adopted to Trotskyism, but this had no effect on the relations between the members of the International Brigades.

p In Austria itself the illegal working-class organisations—- revolutionary Socialists, the Communist Party, the Austrian section of IRA and the Free Trade Unions—invariably came out on the side of the Spanish Republic and their unity of action continued. A joint declaration of the Communist Party of Austria and the Party of Revolutionary Socialists, passed at the end of 1936, stated: “The central committees of both parties are unanimous in continuing to support the struggle of the Spanish people ... and increasing aid. They welcome all acts of solidarity on the part of the international working-class movement ... particularly the political, moral and material assistance rendered to the Spanish people by the Soviet Government and the peoples of the Soviet Union—-"  [42•3 

p In September 1936 the Communist Party began sending groups 43 of volunteers to the International Brigades. Johann Koplenig undertook the organisation of this difficult task. The police and border guards were arresting anyone they found crossing the frontier whom they thought suspicious, and usually put them in concentration camps. Many volunteers made their way across the mountains into Switzerland disguised as mountaineers or skiers. Anti-fascists who were under police surveillance and had no passports had to be provided with forged papers. To reach Spain the Austrian volunteers were ready to make any material sacrifices and many of them sold their property to do so. For example, the young Tyrolese farmer Max Bair, whose story has been told by Egon Erwin Kisch, sold his cattle in order to obtain funds for himself and his friends for the journey to Spain.

p In the conditions of fascist terror the mass international solidarity of the Austrians could find expression in few other ways except illegal collection of funds for aid to Spain, which also demanded considerable efforts, self-sacrifice and courage. It must be stressed that mass unemployment and low wages naturally limited the size of contributions.

p Here is one fact that shows how the authorities persecuted those who expressed their solidarity with the struggle of the Spanish people. On August 24, 1936, Thomas Hofer of Knittelfeld, unemployed, was denounced for collecting money for Spain. The accused confessed to having collected 2.6 schillings (at that time this sum amounted to payment for three hours’ work at a low rate). A military court in the town of Leoben condemned him to two years of strict imprisonment “for state treason”. The sentence contained the following motivation: “Inasmuch as Hofer was collecting money for Spain, it is obvious that he was doing this on the instructions of the Communist Party. Such collection is to be regarded as propaganda of communist ideas in Austria, which is state treason."  [43•1 

p “Not a single event since February 1934 has roused such a deep response at factories as the movement of solidarity with the Spanish people,” wrote the newspaper Tribunal, the organ of the Austrian section of IRA (Nos 9 and 10, 1936). “The Austrian workers are performing in practice true miracles of solidarity.” It gave the following example. At automobile and arms factories in Steier the workers had refused to collect funds for a squadron of the Austrian army and had taken a decision that everyone should contribute one schilling in aid of the Spanish Popular Front. The money was collected at almost all the factories in the district of Floridsdorf, Vienna, and also at all factories of the metal-working industry of the capital. The Vienna tram workers collected a considerable sum. In the district organisations of the Communist Party of Austria the collections were made under 44 SPANISH
ESISTAUCHEUER
KAMPF
Specimens of postage stamps circulated illegally by the Austrian Communist Party as part of a campaign of aid to Republican Spain, 1936 the slogan: “Every district—one machine-gun for the Spanish Popular Front.” Political prisoners in one of the Vienna prisons collected and smuggled cut ten schillings for the Aid Spain Fund.

p The government’s answer was police persecution. On September 15, according to the Arbeiter-Zeitung of September 27, 1936, the police arrested for fund-collecting twelve trade-union officials and eighteen other workers at the Siemens-Schuckert factory in 45 Engerthstrasse and at the cable factory in Leopoldau (a district of Vienna.—Ed.). The workers went on strike. The police surrounded these factories and made fresh arrests. The workers of the AustroFiat works then declared a two-hour solidarity strike and some of the arrested men were released. On October 4, 1936, the same newspaper reported arrests at the Shuttleworth works, at a Vienna milk-processing factory, at the main tram depot Vienna-Simmering, in Trauzl, at the railway in Floridsdorf and at the Alpine- Donawitz works. On November 2, twenty-eight tram workers were arrested in the Brigittenau district.

p International solidarity, however, was not to be broken by police persecution. The constant explanatory work carried on by the underground working-class organisations kept up a high level of anti-fascist consciousness. There was not a single illegal central or local or factory newspaper that did not devote considerable space to reports about Spain, the solidarity movement and the letters of the Austrian volunteers. Even the harsh sentences passed by the Austrian courts could not stop the movement of solidarity. Here is an example of such a sentence, quoted from the ArbeiterZeitung of October 18, 1936: “A cabinet-maker’s apprentice from Miirzzuschlag, Peter Draxler, has been sentenced in Leoben to five years’ strict imprisonment for being in possession of a pamphlet against Franco. There was not a word about Austria in the pamphlet, it was written against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini! But this was enough to earn him a sentence of five years in gaol!”

p Mention must also be made of the great help rendered by Austrian anti-fascists to the internationalists of other countries who were making their way across Austrian territory into Spain.

p Even before the creation of the International Brigades Austrians were fighting the fascists on Spanish soil as part of the Thaelmann Centuria. One of them was the young Viennese Communist Franz Hrejsemnou, who succeeded in reaching Spain in the first days of the Franco putsch; later he took part in the defence of Madrid, served in a ski reconnaissance detachment, then joined a tank crew and was killed in action at Brunete in the summer of 1937. The Viennese medical student Pepi Schneeweiss also fought in the same centuria and had been one of the first to set out for Spain at his own risk.

p Later the volunteer anti-fascists started going to Spain in groups, usually through Paris, where their further transportation had for long been managed, on the instructions of the Communist Party of Austria, by the well-known Austrian writer Otto Heller (who afterwards died in a nazi concentration camp).

p In October 1936 the fnst organised groups of anti-fascists from various countries, including Austria, began to reach Spain. One of them was Adolf Reiner (real name Anton Dobritzhofer), a Viennese mechanic, and former company commander of the 46
A group of Austrian volunteers of the Thaelmann Battalion, May 1937 Schutzbund Karl Marx Regiment. In December 1936 he took part in the defence of Madrid as a machine-gunner, and during the operation on the River Ebro in the summer of 1938 commanded the llth International Brigade in the rank of Major.

p The first commander of the llth International Brigade, General Kleber (Manfred Stern), who played a prominent part in organising the defence of Madrid in autumn 1936, was also born and brought up in Austria. From 1936 to 1938 Major Kurt (Josef Dycka) fought in Spain, having been one of the leaders of the illegal Schutzbund organisations in 1934 to 1935. During the Brunete offensive he was the chief of staff of the 35th Division; he was killed during the Second World War, fighting the Hitler troops in a Soviet partisan detachment.

p Most of the Austrian volunteers in Spain fought in the Chapayev Battalion of the 13th International Brigade and in the llth Brigade. They were particularly good machine-gunners. They were to be found in all arms of the services except the navy, and in every kind of unit. The former Schutzbund men, fighter pilots Hans Dobias and Walter Korous helped to defend Spain in the air; Major Walter Fischer was a doctor in the llth and 15th brigades, and later in the 3rd Division. Major Fritz Jensen was at first brigade surgeon of the 13th Brigade, and later in command of the medical centre in Benicasim. Many Austrian doctors and nurses served in units of the Republican Army.

47

p Major Adolf Fischer (Hugo Muller) commanded a battalion of machine-gunners of the 33rd Division; Laurenz Hiebl, a Spanish battalion of the 35th Division; Engineer Leopold Knopp, a battalion of the 14th Brigade; Major Fritz Trankler, an engineer unit; Doctor Heinz Diirmayer, one of the commanders of the illegal Schutzbund, was commissar of a 15th Brigade unit; Captain Franz Willinger served in the 16th Corps; the former Schutzbund man, Rudolf Had was commander of the Thaelmann Battery; Franz Hirschmann, an instructor in the 3rd Division; Ferdinand Erb fought in the 122nd Brigade; Leopold Mallina was chief of staff of the 86th Brigade, which included an international battalion.

p The Austrians made up the largest national group in the international armoured vehicle company. It was commanded by Linzer Sepp Mittermaier from Linz. Nearly twenty Austrian mountaineers commanded by Hias Hitzenberger fought in a guerrilla group in the Don Benito area, near the Portuguese frontier. The officers Toni Sandmann, the brothers Franz and Willy Etz and Alfred Ruzicka served in a light-tank regiment, in which Leo Dank (Hermann Neissl) was battalion commissar. In the booklet The February Fighting, published in Spain, Ruzicka wrote about one of the Austrians of the International Brigades: “Comrade Josef Kavka, whom we used to call Joschka, was 25 years old. He came from a family that had been working class for generations. For the last two years he had been serving in the Austrian army. He left for Spain in November 1936. On the 3rd anniversary of the heroic February fighting in Vienna he was killed defending the Spanish people and international democracy.”

p Other Austrian anti-fascists whose names are not mentioned here, fought valiantly in the International Brigades. Nearly 700 Austrian volunteers lie buried in the soil of Spain. Many of them who survived the fighting there later gave their lives in active struggle against the nazis or perished in Hitler’s concentration camps.

p On November 11, 1936, 625 internationalists arrived in Albacete. They were formed into the Chapayev Battalion which became part of the 13th Brigade. After a brief period of training the brigade was sent to the Teruel Front to take part in an offensive. Seven attacks and a 24-day defence of the positions captured— such were the first operations of the Chapayev Battalion, a baptism of fire for many of the Austrians, particularly the men of the machine-gun company. During the fighting the battalion’s standard bearer was Franz Luda, of Vienna; he was badly wounded and had to have both legs amputated.

p On February 13, 1937, after the fall of Malaga, the 13th Brigade was sent to reinforce the Southern Front. Doctor Fritz Jensen described the road to the front as follows: "The 180 kilometres from Almen’a to Adra were covered very slowly. The road was blocked with people: milicianos, old men and children. ... Then we entered 48
Austrian volunteers of an armoured car company Adra. The population were piling their belongings on to donkeys. Our first lorries drove in. ... The men jumped out, formed up and started singing. . . . Everyone’s spirits rose. Not only the population, but also the milicianos. We proposed that anyone who wanted to could join the Chapayev Battalion. More than 250 people responded. . . .”

p From the end of February to the end of June 1937 the Chapayev Battalion fought in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada (at a height of 3,000 metres above sea level) at Valsequillo, La Granjela and (in terrible heat) at Penarroya.

p “The Chapayev Battalion occupied positions in the difficult terrain of the Sierra Nevada mountains,” wrote Julius Schacht (Heinrich Fritz), the commissar of a machine-gun company. "Many of the Austrian comrades were accustomed to mountain country and this was a great help. . . .

p “One day at six in the morning a platoon commander and I set out to inspect machine-gun nests high in the mountains. We were mounted but only at noori did we spot the machine-gun crews. . . . They had no tents and we could only promise to try to obtain blankets, greatcoats and ponchos for the men in the nearby villages. A few days before they had endured a snowstorm. There were no shelters. Their clothes and blankets were wet through. . . . In these conditions the men had a whole week to wait before they would be relieved.”

49

p After four and a half arduous months in the front line the 13th Brigade was relieved, but instead of resting it was sent to the Central Front to take part in the offensive on Brunete. On July 7 the Chapayev Battalion participated in the assault on Villanueva de la Canada. Later the 13th Brigade crossed the River Guadarrama and captured fascist positions on the heights of the eastern bank. During this operation it suffered heavy losses and was later reformed. The Austrian volunteers were put into the 4th Battalion of the llth International Brigade.

p Austrians fought in this brigade from the moment of its formation. One of them, Gustav Szindo who later became its commander, described two episodes of the battle for the Jarama in his book The llth Brigade: “On February 15, 1937, the fascists attacked in the sector held by the Thaelmann Battalion.... Many of the men who were bringing up ammunition were wounded, others could not get through because the fascists had mounted a heavy fire curtain. A 24-year-old Austrian farmhand Johann Mayer then volunteered to deliver the ammunition. He managed to supply one machine-gun and two infantry companies with cartridges and hand grenades... . He saved the lives of many wounded comrades by carrying them off the field of battle.... The outcome of the engagement of February 15 depended on Mayer because on that day ammunition was the key factor. Johann Mayer fell in March of the same year in the fighting at Brihuega.

p “Johann Mayer was the hero of February 15, and a few days later his fellow countryman Adolf Reiner (later brigade commander) also performed a feat of valour. During a fascist tank attack he crawled a distance of 100 metres with a rifle and armourpiercing bullets towards the advancing tanks and put two of them out of action. This created panic among the crews of the other tanks and they retreated.”

p At home the Austrian anti-fascists were supporting their fellow countrymen fighting on the Spanish fronts. The central committees of the Communist Party of Austria and the organisation of Revolutionary Socialists appealed to the Austrian people that, in honour of the anniversary of the February fighting in Austria, February should be made a month of collection of funds for the International Brigades.

After the Jarama the Austrians in the ranks of the llth International Brigade fought against the motorised Italian divisions at Guadalajara, both in defence and in the counter-attack during which the Republican Army routed four Italian divisions. Later the Austrians took part in the fighting at Utande. In July 1937 they had a red-letter day: an Austrian battalion was formed as part of the llth Brigade. This was not only an acknowledgement of the fighting services of the Austrian volunteers; it was also of great importance to the anti-fascist struggle in Austria.

50
Organisers of the 12th of February Battalion. Centre: Franz Honner

p The Austrian fighters decided to name their battalion “The 12th of February, 1934”. They all made a sacred vow to fight to the last drop of blood for freedom and independence of Republican Spain, realising that this would serve as a noble example for the liberation struggle of the Austrian people. A few days later the Republican troops launched an offensive against the fascists in the Brunete area. In this operation the Austrian battalion received its baptism of fire. Owing to lack of weapons, particularly machine-guns, it was at first in the reserve, but when the attacking battalions were held up in front of Quijorna the 12th of February Battalion was ordered to ioin the offensive. After a successful third attack on a cemetery held by 600 Moroccans, more than 100 prisoners were taken along with many rifles and other trophies, including much needed ammunition. The division command officially thanked the fighters of the llth Brigade who had liberated Quijorna and proved their worth in combat.

p In August 1937 the 12th of February Battalion once again distinguished itself, this time on the Aragon front. In the assault on Quinto the Austrian volunteers captured a fascist artillery battery and won yet another message of thanks from the command. When the fascists made desperate efforts to relieve the garrison of Belchite which had been surrounded by Republican troops, the 12th of February Battalion and other units of the llth Brigade blocked their path and beat off all attacks at Mediana.

p Right up to the end of the war there was not a single major battle in which the llth Brigade, and with it the 12th of February Battalion, did not take part. During the second operation at Teruel in January 1938 the battalion held out for weeks, repulsing the attacks of numerically superior fascist forces. On the sector held by 51 the Austrian volunteers the continuous fascist attacks were supported by tanks and aircraft, but the volunteers withdrew from their positions only after receiving orders from the superior command.

p The battalion suffered heavy losses. During the assault on Quinto its commissar, Willi Soukup, a favourite with everybody, was killed. At Teruel the deputy commissar of the battalion, Communist Paul Zimmermann (Karl Kaspar), and many other comrades laid down their lives.

p The battalion also fought valiantly during the enemy breakthrough on the Aragon Front and in the Levante. In March 1938 during the heavy rearguard actions of the retreating Eastern Front the Austrian brigaders heard the sad news of the occupation of Austria by nazi Germany. "All the more reason for us to fight against fascism and smash it here, in Spain,"—such was the reaction of the volunteers of the 12th of February Battalion.

p Spaniards, Germans and men of other nationalities also fought in the 12th of February Battalion. It was commanded at various times not only by Austrians—Majors Karl Bauer, Emil Reuter, Franz Berger, Adolf Reiner and Captain Karl Rimbach—but also by Germans—Captain Harry Hellfeld and Major Willy Benz. Its other commissars were the Austrians Leo Wurzel (Lorenz Mraz) and Paul Steiner (Peter Hofer), the German Walter Knobloch and the Spaniard Vincente S. Bordes. A sound international fighting friendship grew up in the battalion.

p In the middle of October 1937 a battalion meeting was held in a small village on the Aragon Front. Battalion Commissar Paul Steiner described it as follows: “We held our meeting by the walls of a church on a hill. Five hundred comrades of different nationalities stood shoulder to shoulder.... While a letter addressed home appealing for unity of the anti-fascist forces in Austria was being read out, it grew dark and we had to light candles. This gave the meeting even greater seriousness and solemnity. In answer to the question, who would vote for the letter, five hundred clenched fists went up. The letter was accepted unanimously. The Spanish comrades shouted, “Long live unity!" and the meeting ended with the singing of the Internationale...."

p When Hitler’s army occupied Austria in March 1938, some of the anti-fascists succeeded in leaving the country. The flow of Austrians into the International Brigades once again increased. They included activists from the Communist Party. Fighting in the ranks of the Austrian battalion they took part in the last major offensive of the Republican Army on the Ebro.

p Lieutenant Julius Schindler, the battalion adjutant, wrote in his memoirs: “On the night of July 24, 1938, the battalion crossed the river near the village of Vinebre and in the morning occupied the township of Asco. From there it advanced on Fatarella, routing 52 isolated fascist groups on the way. On July 28 we attacked the Gandesa-Batea heights but without success. The next day Brigade Commander Otto Flatter (Ferenc Munnich) was wounded. He was replaced on August 12 by Major Adolf Reiner and the command of the battalion was taken over by a German, Major Willy Benz.”

p On the 17th and 18th of August the 12th of February Battalion attacked Height 481 in the Sierra Pandols five times. Though they failed to capture it, the brigade considerably improved its positions on the Tortosa-Gandesa road. Between September 7 and 23 at Height 565 the brigade beat off incessant attacks of the fascists, who were massively supported by artillery and tanks. On September 12 the Austrian battalion relieved the Thaelmann Battalion and held the front line from early morning to late at night under constant bombardment and repulsed all attacks.

p On September 24 the llth Brigade was withdrawn to the reserve. The 12th of February Battalion suffered heavy losses on the Ebro. It started the operation with 500 officers and men of various nationalities and ended it with only 122. Losses included the former editor of the newspaper Rote Fahne, Fabian (Rudi Auerhan), Schutzbund Lieutenant Franz Zartl, Captain Fritz Mitter from Upper Austria, Sergeant-Ma j or Hans Wagner and Victor Lenhardt from Styria.

p The withdrawal of the battalion from the front line coincided with the order issued by the Spanish Government to demobilise the internationalists in the Republican Army. It was very sad to part with the Spanish comrades. The Austrians, like the other international brigaders, were determined to continue the struggle against fascism. Brigade Commissar Ernst Blank wrote in the newspaper Pasaremos: “Yesterday I was in the 12th of February Battalion when our comrades gave their fraternal promise to fight as they had been fighting for the cause of Spain, for peace and the freedom of the peoples. Such a promise is no empty phrase for our people.”

p The demobilised Austrians from the llth Brigade remained until January 1939 in a small township near the River Ter in Catalonia. They could not return home and not a single “ democratic" country of the West was prepared to accept them. The Republic had recalled the internationalists from the front at a time when Hitler and Mussolini, in violation of their promises, were strengthening their troops operating in Spain. At the end of January the Italian motorised divisions with Franco’s troops behind them approached Barcelona. Tens of thousands of women, children, old men and wounded crowded the roads leading to the French frontier.

p On January 23, 1939, the demobilised brigaders again took up arms. They had to cover the retreat of the Republican troops. The 53 Austrians were commanded by Major Adolf Fischer. On January 24 fascist aircraft bombed the battalion’s positions and on February 3 the last battle was fought against Italian troops at the town of Gerona. A group of 28 Austrians commanded by Lieutenant Hans Hertl defended the railway bridge over the Ter until it had to be blown up to prevent the Italian advance. On February 9, these 28 Austrians, having done their duty, crossed the French frontier near Port-Bou.

p At the end of the Spanish war some of the international brigaders were given refuge by the Soviet Union, some of them succeeded in obtaining permission to enter Britain and the Scandinavian countries, but the majority remained in France and were later put into the concentration camps of St Cyprien, Gurs, Vernet and Argeles. Some of them escaped from these camps and lived illegally in France. In the camp at Gurs the 450 Austrians who remained there set up a school to improve their general and political education which was attended by 300 people.

p The French authorities tried to get rid of the international brigaders and demanded that they should go either to North Africa or back to their own country, which had now become part of the “Third Reich”. The Austrians were transferred to Argeles, where their barracks were surrounded by two companies of mobile guards. The members of the International Brigade were forced to go to Africa for the alleged purpose of building a railway, but in fact when they got there they were pressed into the Foreign Legion. The Austrians resisted and some of them were arrested.

p After the fall of France the officers of the German armistice commission offered the Austrians repatriation with the assurance that they would not be persecuted on their return. The fighters of the 12th of February Battalion had no illusions on this score, but they wanted to continue the fight against Hitler in their own country and not be sent away to Africa. Faced with this choice, most of the internees in Argeles, and also some of the prisoners of the Vernet camp, decided with the consent of the leading organs of their parties to accept repatriation. Few, however, succeeded in retaining their freedom.

p On May Day 1941 nearly all the repatriates entered the Dachau concentration camp. Even in the concentration camps they continued the fight against fascism. Thanks to their unity and high morale a relatively large number of fighters of the International Brigades succeeded in surviving the terrible conditions of their imprisonment. Of those who perished in this struggle mention must be made of the former Schutzbund battalion commander of Favoriten (a district of Vienna), Rudolf Friemel, who represented the Revolutionary Socialists in the 12th of February Battalion. The Gestapo arrested him in Auschwitz during an attempt to establish contact between the International Resistance Centre, of which 54 he was a member, and the Polish partisans. He was brutally tortured and hanged on December 30, 1944.

p On the day of the liberation of Dachau the Austrian international brigaders Anton Hackle and Erich Hubmann (Lustig) were killed in a fighting with SS men. Sepp Plieseis, who had fought in a guerrilla detachment in Spain, succeeded on August 20, 1943, in escaping from a gang working outside the camp near the town of Hablein. In the Alt Aussee mountains he formed a guerrilla detachment, which gave the SS a great deal of trouble, and saved seven thousand unique paintings plundered by the nazis in various countries of Europe.

p The Austrian international brigaders who reached the Soviet Union fought in the Red Army and in partisan detachments. Others displayed great courage in the struggle against the Hitler occupation forces as members of the French Resistance.

p Communist Fritz Lettner of Salzburg, who was suffering from tuberculosis, was in a French hospital under police surveillance. In 1943 he and other prisoners escaped and got through to the French guerrillas. He fought with them till the liberation of France and returned home as an officer of the French Resistance forces.

p Richard Sdolsek, who beginning with the defence of Madrid in 1936 took part in all the engagements of the llth Brigade, escaped from a French camp and went underground for a time, then made his way to Vienna. The Gestapo did not know that he had taken part in the Spanish war. In 1943 he was called up for the Wehrmacht. With another comrade he escaped to the Italian guerrillas with whom he fought until the liberation of the Reggio Emilia province.

p The Austrian emigre Communists and participants in the fighting in Spain took an active part in the French Resistance and showed no less heroism there than in armed guerrilla warfare. They brought out pamphlets and newspapers for the Austrians serving in the Wehrmacht and distributed them in the German garrisons of Paris, Bordeaux, Nancy, Lille and other cities. The antifascist newspapers Soldat im Westen and Soldat im Mittelmeer, which were aimed at the men in the German army, were also published by the Austrians. The first of them was founded by the Austrian international brigader Viktor Milliner (Hans Zipper), who was later murdered by the nazis in the Grossrosseln concentration camp. Austrian women, including nurses who had taken part in the fighting in Spain, helped to distribute illegal publications and arms for the guerrillas.

p In 1943 the Austrians adopted a new method of underground struggle. Pretending to be French, they enlisted for work in the “Reich” as foreign workers, so that when they got to Austria they could organise resistance groups at factories and in towns and villages. This was done, for example, by two nurses, former 55
The banner of the llth International Brigade participants in the Spanish war, Mara (Frieda Ginsburg) and Anni Peczenig (her husband, a former volunteer, had been taken from the French camp and murdered in Auschwitz). These brave women were tracked down by the Gestapo and shot in the women’s concentration camp of Ravensbruck.

p The Austrian Freedom Battalions were of special significance in the ranks of the Yugoslav NationalLiberation Army and the Styria fighting group, in which the former international brigaders played a leading part.

p In the autumn of 1944 Franz Honner, one of the organisers of the 12th of February Battalion and several other comrades parachuted from a Soviet aircraft over the frontier between Slovenia and Croatia. This group was joined by Resistance fighters and Austrians who had deserted from the Wehrmacht. Thus was formed the first Austrian Freedom Battalion. This battalion, which was engaged in heavy fighting right up to the unconditional surrender of Hitler Germany, had as its commanders and commissars former participants in the fighting in Spain—Max Bair, Romen Fiichsel, Leopold Stanzl and Franz Gebhart.

p Towards the end of spring 1944 twenty-five parachutists landed in a liberated part of Slovenia. Of these fifteen were international brigaders, including eleven Austrians, two Spaniards and two Italians. One of the Spaniards was Americo Brizuela, commander of the llth Brigade (after the recall of the internationalists from Spain). This unit, which called itself the Styria fighting group, conducted major military and propaganda operations. In the heavy fighting the group, which was often left to act on its own for weeks 56 on end and had to operate in any weather, suffered substantial losses. Of the Austrian international brigaders, Leo Engelmann and Karl Sattler (Prater) were killed, and the former signals chief of the llth Brigade, Captain Sepp Spanner, was gravely wounded. But this fighting group achieved considerable success. Just before the end of the war it captured the town of Schwanberg in Southern Styria and by this time it had grown to five hundred strong.

p At the beginning of January 1945 about twenty-five Austrian Communists made their way from France to liberated Belgrade, where out of former prisoners of war they formed the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Freedom battalions. They were commanded by the international brigaders Peter Hofer, Zalel Schwager, Max Goldberger and Laurenz Hiebl. Immediately after the German surrender the 2nd Battalion moved from the Croatian front to Vienna, where it arrived on May 12, 1945. Here it formed the nucleus of the new police force.

p The former fighters in Spain did a lot for the restoration of the Austrian Republic. Many of them were in responsible positions in the Communist Party; fifteen former international brigaders were at various times, or still are, members of the Central Committee of the CPA.

p The fate of the banner of the 11th Brigade, which was entrusted on April 17, 1938 to the 12th of February Battalion is worth recording. After the battalion resumed military operations in Spain in January 1939, the battalion’s machine-gun company entrusted the banner to Ferdinand Barth, of Vienna. He wrapped it round his body and carried it safely under his uniform across the French frontier. In the St Cyprien camp he sewed it between two blankets. The banner then passed from camp to camp until Otto Glaser (Max Stern) “disappeared” with it for four weeks to conduct talks with the Austrian Party Committee in Toulouse. He returned without the banner, which had been left in the care of Mali Fritz, a Vienna-born woman. In the autumn of 1940, during a big terrorist sweep against the Austrian participants in the Resistance movement Mali was arrested, but she succeeded in taking the banner, sewed into a blanket, with her to a prison cell where she was kept with Gerta Schindel, a former worker for the Paris Aid Spain Committee. From there the banner went with them to a concentration camp in the Lozere department.

p After her escape from the camp Gerta informed the comrades where the banner was. On Christmas Eve 1941, in a snowstorm, Mali passed the brigade’s banner through the barbed wire to an Austrian participant in the Spanish fighting, Fritz Weiss. Meanwhile the Germans had occupied the whole of France and the banner of ten had to be moved to new hiding places. Finally it came to Paul Kessler in Lyons. In June 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo but would not speak even under brutal torture. During 57 transfer to the Buchenwald concentration camp he escaped from the train. In October 1944 Kessler travelled to liberated Lyons to search for the banner. His flat had been ransacked but in one corner he found the cherished blanket—the Gestapo had never guessed what a treasure it concealed.

In January 1945 the Austrian international brigaders brought the banner with them to Yugoslavia and from there along with the Austrian Freedom Battalions it arrived in Vienna. Here the banner of the llth Brigade is kept by the Communist Party of Austria as a fighting symbol of anti-fascism and the international solidarity of those who fought for the freedom of Spain.