358

p The national-revolutionary war in Spain, 1936 to 1939, is among the most important events of world history. The mid-thirties were a crucial stage in the struggle between the forces of peace and war, in the struggle of the proletariat against bourgeois reaction and its extreme form—fascism.

p This was a time when the Italian fascist army had crushed Ethiopia, when nazi Germany had openly begun to rebuild its armed forces and in 1936 had marched into the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland. In Asia Japan had occupied Northeast China and attacked the city of Shanghai and was preparing to invade the central regions of China. Encouraged by the growing power of the fascist states, the extreme reactionaries in many countries were rapidly becoming active. In Bulgaria, Greece, Rumania, Poland, and Austria the governments were turning fascist; the Croix du Feu organisation in France, the “Rexistes” in Belgium, the “Quislingers” in Norway were seeking to establish their power and impose fascism on these countries. But everywhere the forces of progress were rallying their ranks.

p The working class of many countries, and particularly its advanced detachment—the Communists—realised what dangers and sufferings fascism would bring upon the people. Unfortunately, the international working-class movement at this crucial moment of history was split. Even when faced with the deadly danger of fascism and approaching world war, the leaders of the Second International refused to build a united working-class front.

p The Seventh Congress of the Communist International held in Moscow in the summer of 1935 made a great contribution to the solidarity of the anti-fascist and anti-war forces. The Congress worked out a correct strategic orientation and called upon the working class to unite in action against fascism and the threat of a new imperialist war, to create a Popular Front combining the 359 workers and peasants and the bulk of the petty bourgeoisie of the towns and the intelligentsia.

p These decisions roused a response in the hearts and minds of wide sections of the population in the countries of West and East. By 1936 the Popular Front had won the elections in Spain and in France. A trend towards unity of the democratic forces and real gains by the working people in the struggle against reaction were to be observed in the United States, Britain and other countries of the capitalist world.

p In these years the Soviet Union made tremendous efforts to build a system of collective security in Europe and organise opposition to the aggressors. Thanks to the successful fulfilment of the first five-year plans and the strengthening of its industrial and defensive capacity the USSR was steadily strengthening its positions in the international field. Its treaties with France and Czechoslovakia on mutual aid, signed in May 1935, were a notable contribution to the organisation of a system of collective security.

p The struggle between the forces of democracy and fascism was becoming ever more intense and in a number of cases took the form of armed conflict.

p The scene of the first major clash was Spain.

p About forty years separate us from the outbreak of the militaryfascist revolt in Spain. The events that began on July 18, 1936 with the action of the reactionary generals and fascist and monarchist organisations at once became a focal point of world politics. Not only the fate of democracy in Spain was at stake; the solution to many problems on which the future of the whole European continent largely depended was in danger.

p The progressive reforms in Spain, even those carried out within the framework of the democratic parliamentary system, evoked intervention from powerful external reactionary forces. The internal class conflict was converted into an international one.

p The outcome of the battle that had begun on Spanish soil would decide what path that country was to take in future—the path of democratic development or that of a fascist regime. It was to have a considerable influence also on the general balance of forces on the international arena, either postponing or hastening a new world conflict.

p The outbreak of the national-revolutionary war of the Spanish people in July 1936 had been preceded by several years of intense political class struggle within the country. The overthrow of the monarchy in 1931 had not led to the establishment of a strong republican system. The reactionary forces had not abandoned their attempts at restoration and were stirring up armed rebellions against the Republic and organising terrorist acts against its leaders. The bloc organised by the Right-wing parties, the Confederacion Espanola de Derechas Autonomas (CEDA), 360 represented the interests of big capital, the landowners and the church, and was oriented towards Hitler Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. The so-called radical party of Lerroux, which formed a government after victory at the elections at the end of 1933, was also virtually in the same camp as the reactionaries. The reactionary, antipopular policy of this government caused the workers of the northern province of Asturias to take up arms in 1934 in defence of democracy. The uprising was harshly suppressed by the government but stimulated the unification of the progressive republican forces—Communists, Socialists and also the parties of the petty and middle bourgeoisie and the liberal intelligentsia.

p In January 1936 the anti-fascist parties and organisations signed a pact on the creation of the Popular Front; one month later the Popular Front won the elections to the Cortes. This was the beginning of a new stage in Spanish history marked by the revolutionary inspiration of the masses and unity between the working class and other supporters of the Republic. But at the same time the reactionary fascist forces were consolidating. The big bourgeoisie, the numerous class of landowners, the officer class and a considerable number of priests of the Catholic Church, having lost hope of regaining political power by constitutional means, set out to prepare an armed coup.

p The spearhead of the forces of political reaction was the fascist party, the Spanish Falange, organised on the nazi pattern and adopting nazi methods of provocation, terror and social demagogy. In the Army and Navy, among the declassed elements in the cities and among the peasants of the most backward areas, the future insurgents carried on their work of corruption, recruited supporters and organised provocations against the Republic. At the same time they were forming ties with the capitals of the fascist states— Berlin and Rome.

p Nazi aid to Spanish reaction was promised even before the outbreak of the mutiny. In February 1936 one of the ringleaders of the conspiracy, General Sanjurjo, flew from Portugal to Berlin. He met Goering and Rosenberg, informed the nazi bosses of the plans of the Spanish putschists and obtained a promise of support. The co-operation of fascist Italy had been guaranteed even before this. Under a pact concluded in 1934 in Rome between the representatives of Spanish reaction and Mussolini, the latter had undertaken to assist in the overthrow of the Republican Government with arms and money.

p The revolt which began on July 18 at first took an unfavourable turn for the plotters. The armed actions of the military garrisons against the government were put down in the majority of key points. The insurgents’ main standby—the Moroccan units and the Foreign Legion—were stationed in Africa, arid Franco lacked the means to bring them over to the peninsula because the merchant 361 fleet and most of the seamen in the Navy refused to support the fascists. The revolt could have been nipped in the bud. The Chairman of the Second International, Louis de Brouckere, who was in Spain at the beginning of August 1936, wrote that his first conclusion had been that the Spanish Government and the Spanish people were capable of crushing the mutiny if there was no interference from anywhere else. At the same time, in August 1936, the nazi Admiral Raeder reported to Hitler that since the greater part of the air and naval forces were fighting on the Government’s side, “it is not to be expected that the Franco Government can hold out for long without large-scale support from the outside".  [361•1 

p The leaders of the conspiracy were also plunged in gloom. In a letter to Roosevelt the American ambassador in Spain, Claude G. Bowers, passed on the substance of his talks with Count Romanones, one of the pillars and ideologists of reaction. On the second day of the revolt Romanones expressed confidence that the insurgents would win within “four days or five days at the utmost”. “Ten days later,” writes Bowers, “I reminded him of what he had said and he made this very significant reply: ’We counted on the Navy and were disappointed, we thought the Basques would be with us and they are against us. But the most serious thing of all is we did not count on the general rising of the people.’ " The fact is, Bowers adds on his own behalf, “people of all classes, under the nobility and moneyed aristocracy, are fighting with a superhuman courage never equalled in the history of Spain."  [361•2  Even General Mola, commander of the armed forces of the insurgents in the northen zone, wrote to General Franco at the time that he believed the cause was lost.  [361•3 

p At this point the German Junkers were sent to the aid of the Francoists. Hitler ordered full support for the insurgents. Using the transport planes supplied by Germany, Franco was able within two weeks to transfer from Tetuan to Spain 18,000 Moroccan soldiers and officers with all their equipment. In Germany large air force units were prepared which a few months later, in November 1936, were sent to Spain as part of the Condor Legion. Thousands of officers and men of the regular German and Italian armies, armaments and equipment were sent to ports and airfields held by the insurgents. The nazis and Italian fascists launched a war of extermination against the Spanish people and 362 at the same time took over important strategic positions in the western half of the Mediterranean.

p The following by no means complete figures give a notion of the scale of the fascist aggression in Spain. During the war Italy supplied the insurgents with 1,000 aircraft, 950 tanks and armoured cars, 1,930 artillery pieces, 8,759 heavy and light machine-guns, 1,426 mortars, nearly 250 thousand rifles, more than 7.5 million shells, 324 million rounds of ammunition, 16,720 tons of bombs, 1,000 tons of explosives and much other military equipment and materiel to a total value of 14,000 million lire. Huge quantities of materiel, guns, ammunition and equipment were also sent from Germany. In only two years of war—up to June 1938— Hitler supplied the insurgents with 650 aircraft, 200 tanks and 700 artillery pieces.

p The units of the Italian army of invasion in Spain numbered 150,000-200,000 officers and men and the German Condor Legion was over 50,000 strong.  [362•1 

p If we add to the military equipment and manpower of the interventionists the more than 100,000 professional officers and trained regular soldiers of the units of the Spanish African Army, including the Moroccans and mercenaries of the Foreign Legion, we shall see how much courage, determination and self-sacrifice the Spanish people displayed in fighting for their freedom.

p The refusal of the French Government to hand over to the Republic the arms that had long ago been ordered and paid for was a veritable stab in the back for Spanish democracy. To no avail were the meetings and demonstrations of protest by French workers and democrats demanding "Arms for Spain!" The government of Leon Blum, the leader of the Socialist Party, had virtually surrendered to the dictates of the French reactionary bourgeoisie.

p The class interests of the bourgeoisie, its hatred of socialism, its fear of the establishment of democracy on the Pyrenean Peninsula, its desire to weaken the Popular Front in France and the democratic forces in Britain, the urge to use nazi Germany as a spearhead against the USSR—all these factors prompted the ruling classes of these countries not merely to take no action against the counterrevolutionary intervention of the fascist states in Spain but even to encourage it. The reactionary frame of mind of the shortsighted political leaders of the West was built up by German propaganda with its screams about the “arm of the Kremlin”, the threat of the “bolshevisation of Spain”, etc. While ships with arms and troops disguised in civilian clothes were being dispatched under cover of night from German ports to Spain, Goebbels could 363 be heard on the radio declaring: “We are well aware that the Bolsheviks need Spain for an attack on France.”

p The Anglo-French idea of non-intervention in Spanish affairs arose in the first days of the fascist mutiny. It was officially proposed by Leon Blum to all governments with the aim of disguising the policy of encouraging fascist aggression in Spain and making this policy acceptable to the broad public. A committee representing 27 European countries was set up in London to see that this agreement was observed. But despite the intentions of the initiators of “non-intervention” and thanks to the efforts of Soviet diplomacy, the platform of the London committee was used to inform international public opinion concerning the facts of the criminal armed intervention in Spain by the fascist states of Germany, Italy and Portugal, and to make known the principled stand of the Soviet Union.

p The Soviet Government openly declared in the Non- intervention Committee, the League of Nations and in other quarters that, in accordance with the accepted standards of international law, help to a legal government, including the sale of arms, could not be regarded as intervention, and that the Soviet Government did not consider itself bound by the agreement on non-intervention to any greater extent than the other signatories who were continuing to supply the insurgents with arms.  [363•1 

p In September a massive flow of various kinds of material aid— the result of a nation-wide campaign of solidarity launched by the Soviet public—began to flow into Spain. In the second half of October Spain began to receive from the USSR the first transports carrying purchases of military materials—aircraft, tanks, infantry and artillery weapons, and ammunition.

p In the hands of the defenders of the Republic these arms made it possible to halt the advance of the insurgents and interventionists on Madrid. The very character of the war changed and the detachments and columns of the People’s Militia were reorganised on a regular basis.

p The creation of the Republican People’s Army in the course of the war was one of the major achievements of the Spanish people. The Republican Army, led by gifted commanders from the people, won splendid victories in the battles for Madrid, on the Aragon Front, on the River Ebro and in other engagements. But the tacitly hostile position of France, Britain and the United States, which were blockading the Republic, in effect encouraged the fascist piracy in the Mediterranean with the result that the lines of communication between Spain and the Soviet Union were broken and the insurgents and interventionists were afforded a growing advantage in military equipment. Without hindrance they were 364 able to import unlimited amounts of arms and troops to Spanish territory occupied by the insurgents. It was this inequality that ultimately determined the unfavourable outcome of the war for the Republic.

p The Spanish people’s national-revolutionary war against the combined forces of fascism roused a mass movement of solidarity in all parts of the world. As a genuine people’s movement it had a great wealth and variety of forms and attracted men and women of various social status, profession, and political and religious beliefs. The friends of the Spanish people set themselves two basic aims: the first was to raise the blockade of the Spanish Republic, conducted under cover of the policy of “non-intervention” and restore the legitimate rights of the Spanish Government to obtain arms for the defence of the democratic system; the second was all-round assistance for the population of the Spanish Republic, women and children suffering under the blockade and the brutal bombing of peaceful towns and villages by German and Italian aircraft.

p The first aim was never achieved because the “democratic” governments of France, Britain and the United States refused to consider the clearly expressed will of the masses of the people of these countries. Public pressure did, however, achieve some results. For instance, it may be considered responsible for the periodic relaxations of the harsh restrictions imposed at the Franco-Spanish frontier, which at times made possible the transit of some freight in aid of the Republic, including military equipment from the Soviet Union.

p The campaign of material assistance was undoubtedly successful. According to the report of the International Committee for Coordination of Aid to Republican Spain, 18 countries alone supplied food and other materials to the value of 800 million francs. Millions of people all over the world contributed to this noble cause.

p Valuable though the material results were, the chief and historically significant outcome of the solidarity movement was that it marked an important stage in the development of international progressive thought, broadened and sharpened the peoples’ understanding of the danger of fascism, and hastened the transition from pacifist and passive forms of protest to active and effective forms.

p “The destructive flood of international fascism must be halted. A decisive blow must be struck against this inhuman rampage of obscurantism, racial prejudice, desire for plunder and glorification of war... . Civilisation must be saved from the onrush of barbarity,” Rabindranath Tagore declared in an appeal to world opinion.  [364•1  Romain Rolland, another influential figure among 365 progressive intellectuals, wrote in an appeal to the Congress of the French General Confederation of Labour: "Our watchword is Peace and Liberty. But Peace is by no means a cowardly selfishness which avoids the sacred duties of the people, its national dignity, its honouring of promises, its resistance to the oppressor.... We must add to our slogans yet another . .. this slogan is Courage___"  [365•1 

p The arrogant challenge that fascism had hurled at democracy, the sovereignty of the peoples, and the working people’s social gains awakened a readiness to meet fascist violence with force. The answer of many hundreds of workers and democratic antifascists to the Italo-German aggression in Spain was a desire to take a personal part, gun in hand, in barring the road to fascism.

p This impulse did not come all of a sudden. It had been prepared by the process of growth of the fighting spirit of the working people, particularly the whole working class, in the early part of the thirties. The Asturias and Vienna uprisings in 1934, the action taken by the Paris workers to prevent an attempted fascist coup in February 1934, the action of the worker anti-fascists in 1936, who drove the Mosley gangs from the streets of London, and many other facts were symptomatic of this process.

p In August 1936, 300,000 Americans wishing to volunteer for the army of the Spanish Republic applied to the Spanish Embassy in Washington. Similar spontaneous responses took place in Canada, Poland and other countries. But it speedily emerged that the sympathies of the governments of the bourgeois states, even the most democratic, were by no means on the side of the Spanish Republic. All kinds of legal and administrative measures were taken by these governments to prevent the departure of volunteers for Republican Spain.

p These prohibitions only had the result of a kind of natural selection from among the volunteers of the most resolute, courageous and convinced fighters. The Communist parties of all countries headed the movement and gave it their best cadres. Only the Communists, the Communist International as a whole, were capable of shouldering such a task.

p The British Communist leader Harry Pollitt in a book dedicated to the Communist writer Ralph Fox, who was killed in action against the fascists at Cordoba, wrote: "Friends of Spain who are not members of the Communist Party will pardon me if I refer with pride to the achievements that have been carried out by all sections of the Communist International in support of the Spanish Government. Without the existence of this International of steeled and disciplined revolutionary fighters, the material and moral 366 forms of aid sent to Spain would have brought no accomplishment."  [366•1 

p The International Brigades, made up of anti-fascist volunteers of different political colourings, have gone down in history as the fullest expression of international solidarity and assistance to the Spanish people provided by the world anti-fascist front. The work of selecting volunteers and getting them abroad and into Spain fell almost entirely to the Communist parties of various countries and the Communist International as a whole.

p What were the International Brigades, these troops of a kind that history had never seen before, who left such profound impression on the consciousness of their contemporaries, on politics, literature and art, who played an important role in the struggle of the Armed Forces of the Republic against the insurgents and interventionists, who provided fighters in the Resistance movement in a number of countries during the Second World War, and who became a symbol of devotion to the cause of democracy and freedom of the peoples, self-sacrifice and service to the finest ideals of humanity?

p The modern reader needs at least a brief introduction to the facts concerning the organisation, composition and fighting record of the International Brigades, particularly as the attempts of bourgeois propaganda, either openly pro-fascist or masked as scientific objectivity, to give a distorted picture of the "freedom volunteers" and their historic role have not ceased even today.

p The formation of International Brigades was from the outset part of the government plan to organise a new regular Republican Army. This plan provided for the transformation of the columns of the People’s Militia on the Madrid Front into brigades and at the same time the building up in the rear of fifteen reserve brigades (Nos 11 to 25 inclusive) to regular army strength. This work was handled by a government commission, the “Junta”, headed by Martinez Barrio, Chairman of the Cortes, and his staff in the town of Albacete. It was in this town that the base for the international formations was set up on October 20 on orders of the War Minister.

p Martinez Barrio allotted to the International Brigades the first five numbers from the fifteen (from 11 to 15) and he was not mistaken: they were, in fact, thelirst to go into action. The llth and 12th brigades took up positions on the front line at the beginning of November, and the 13th and 14th, at the end of December, while the ten Spanish brigades completed formation and went into action in January-February 1937 along with the 15th International Brigade.

p These five brigades constituted the core of the international force. Subsequently the organisational activity of the base 367 amounted to reception and training of new volunteers, formation into active units for the front, and dispatch to the front of men returning from hospitals.  [367•1 

p In June 1937, on the Central Front a new International Brigade, named after Dabrowski, was formed out of the 12th Brigade, but almost at the same time the 13th Brigade had to be disbanded after heavy losses in the Brunete operation and its number was passed on to the new brigade instead of the temporary number 150. The sixth brigade with the number 129 was born in February 1938, also at the front—in Estremadura—and comprised a group of reserve battalions that had previously been attached to the 45th Division.

p In addition, another three international battalions were formed, as part of the 86th Spanish Brigade and attached to the 35th and 45th divisions (these divisions were not officially known as international, but they usually comprised International Brigades).

p The base also built up six separate anti-tank artillery batteries, two anti-aircraft batteries and six battalions (groups) of field artillery. Volunteer airmen and tank crews were sent to Republican air force and tank units.

p The basic units of the International Brigades, as throughout the Spanish Army, were the battalions, which were given an official number and an unofficial but traditionally recognised name in honour of historic figures or events, revolutionary leaders and fighters against fascism and also comrades who had fallen in the fighting in Spain.  [367•2  Often these names with their national revolutionary or democratic traditions became in the home countries of the volunteers—in the United States, Canada, Poland, etc.—a kind of password for friends of Republican Spain and spurred the campaign of aid for the Republic and its defenders—the Lincoln, Dabrowski and Garibaldi men, and so on. In many cases the namegiving was a tribute to solidarity with the anti-fascist struggle of other peoples, a tribute of respect to the leaders of the working class.

p It should be stressed that this or that name should not be taken as denoting the nationality of all the members of the unit or even 368 the majority. Although the military command and political workers, having in mind administrative matters, training and communication on the fields of battle, tried to build up units with a common language, they were not always able to achieve this. There was not a single brigade comprising only one nationality, and hardly a single battalion. All the more remarkable was the feeling of unity that characterised the volunteer brigades. The spirit of proletarian internationalism that had brought together under the banner of the Republican Army men and women from all over the planet stood the test of the arduous, bloody fighting in Spain.

p The gradual but steady process of Spanish assimilation of the International Brigades, and also of the air and tank units, took place in an atmosphere of fraternal friendship and unity between the Spanish and volunteer personnel. By July 1938 two-thirds of the brigades consisted of Spanish officers and men and in the brilliant operation to force the River Ebro and to defend the captured bridgehead from July to September 1938 they showed a great fighting capacity and mass heroism.

p This book is not intended to give a systematic account of the national-revolutionary war of the Spanish people and the participation of the international volunteers. It was felt, however, that some record of the main stages in the military operations of the International Brigades should be provided as a background to the war episodes referred to by contributors. The main operations in which the International Brigades took part and the battles they fought are accordingly noted in chronological order in the table below.

p This list does not include the movement of brigades from one front to another, the periods of positional warfare and minor operations of local significance. It does show, however, that not a single major operation of the Republican forces—offensive or defensive—was carried out without the participation of the international volunteers. This very fact, combined with the growing fighting capacity of the best units of the Republican Army, indicates how highly the main command of the Republic valued the fighting qualities of the volunteers. Juan Modesta, an outstanding general of the Republican Army, wrote: "The fighting operations of the 35th Division, of which at various times all the International Brigades formed a part, made me proud of them and I am proud of them to this day."  [368•1  It is a remarkable fact that despite the significant increase in the strength of the government army (in 1938, 776 battalions), the International Brigades—an average of 25 battalions—retained their role as shock units to the end.

p The exploits of the international units were episodes in the operations of the large formations of the Republican Army. But 369 Battles and operations ,, . ,, . , Battles and Date Bngades Operations Date Brigades Defence of ,\ov. 1930- 11, 12, 1-4 Teruel Jan. -Feb. 11,15 Madrid Jan. 1937 1938 Mirabuono Segura de Feb. 1938 11 , 15 (Siguenza) Jan. 1937 12 los Barios Teruel Dec. 1936- Xalamea Fob. 1938 12,13,129 Jan. 1937 13 Defensive Lopera Dec. 1936 14 operations Motril Feb. 1937 13 at Eastern Pitres Feb. 1937 13 Front Jaraina Feb. 1937 11, 12, Belchite- March 1938 15, 13 14, 15 Lecera Guadalajara March 1937 11 , 12 Vinaceite March 1938 H J’ozoblanco Apr. 1937 13 Hijar March 1938 13, 15 Pingatron Apr. 1937 12 Caspe March 11,12,13, 1938 14, 15 Garabilas May 1937 12 Maella March 1938 129 Utando May 1937 11 Monroyo March 1938 129 Balsain May-June 14 Batea March 1938 11 , 15 (Segovia) 1937 Gandesa March-Apr. 11, 15 Huesca June 1937 12 1938 Brunete July 1937 11, 12, Lerida March- Apr. 13 13, 15 1938 Zaragoza Mora la Apr. -May Quinto Aug. 1937 11, 15 Nueva 1938 11,13,15 Villamayor Aug. 1937 12, 13 Aliaga March-Apr. 129 del Gallego 1938 Belch ite Sept. 1937 15 Castellon July 1938 129 Mediana Aug. -Sept. Ebro Operation 1937 11 Amposta July 1938 14 Graficn Sept. -Dec. Asco-Flix July 1938 11, 13, 15 1937 11,15 Corbera July 1938 11, 13, 15 Fuentes del Sierra Ebro Oct. 1937 15 Pandols Cuesta de Sierra Aug. -Sept. 11,13,15 la Reina Oct. 1937 14 Caballs 1938 Vertice de Aug.-Sept. 11,12,13, Gaeta 1938 14,15 Manzancra Aug. -Oct. (Levante) 1938 129 370 without these episodes the record of the struggle of the Spanish people against fascist aggression would be incomplete. They are also part of the struggle of the forces of democracy and socialism for victory over fascist Germany and Italy during the Second World War.

p The losses suffered by the international volunteers—not less than 20,000 killed, mortally wounded, missing and disabled—were the first losses in the European peoples’ resistance to fascism. At the same time this was yet another eloquent testimony to the fighting activity of the International Brigades.

p Historical records give various estimates of the total number of international volunteers in the Spanish Republican Army. The most frequently named figure is 35.000,  [370•1  although a thoughtful and competent military leader like General Walter (Karol Swierczewski), commander of the 35th Division of the Republican Army, considers 42,000 as a quite probable figure.  [370•2  He attributes the difficulties in this question to the poor recording of personnel at the Albacete base and in the International Brigades themselves.

p According to press reports, the Military Control Commission of the League of Nations, which arrived in October 1938 to supervise the withdrawal of the international volunteers, established after a series of checks that there had been altogether 32,109 internationalists in Spain, of which only 12,144 remained in October.

p There can be no doubt that the total figure of volunteers requires further verification. Besides Swierczewski’s remarks about the lack of records at the International Brigades’ base, a number of other factors must be taken into account. Not all the volunteers from abroad registered at the base, particularly those who arrived from the Latin American countries and, thanks to their common language, joined up immediately with the Spanish units of the militia and the regular army. The Soviet volunteers—airmen, tank crews and other specialists assigned to the general Spanish military units—are not listed in the records either.

p There were also different approaches to the recording of nationality. Emigres—Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Italians and others who arrived in Spain from Argentina, the USA, Canada and Belgium—were sometimes registered according to their national origin and at others, according to the countries from which they had come and where they had left families behind them. This is one reason why the number of volunteers indicated in some of the articles of the present book differs from the data of the Albacete base for the International Brigades referred to by 371 Swierczewski.  [371•1  It is quite likely that the total figure, when thoroughly checked in every country, will have to be increased by four or five thousand. At all events the strength of international volunteers, which never exceeded 12 to 15 thousand in any period, was several times less than that of the German and Italian armies of intervention, which was never less than 100 to 120 thousand at one time.

p The true character of the belligerents in Spain and the role of foreign forces in the struggle came out in the reaction of each side to the proposal of the London Committee on Non-intervention for the withdrawal from Spain of foreign volunteers. The Republican Government, while stressing the national significance of the struggle against the fascist interventionists and insurgents, agreed to withdraw immediately the international volunteers from the fronts and implemented this decision immediately between the 23rd and 25th of September, 1938. In complete contrast, General Franco categorically refused to accept the plan for the withdrawal of the Italo-German troops; he was not prepared to risk facing the Spanish people alone, without the support of the interventionists.

p The battle of the Ebro, the last to be fought by the volunteers on Spanish soil, ended on November 15. As they had done two years before, during the defence of Madrid, the defenders of the Republic demonstrated self-sacrifice, determination and devotion to the ideal of freedom and Motherland. When they quitted Spanish soil and said farewell to their Spanish brothers-in-arms, the volunteers were clearly aware that there lay ahead of them a continuation of the fight against fascism that had begun in Spain. In two years the world had moved to the brink of war. The efforts of the fascist Rome-Berlin-Tokio “axis” were dragging more and more countries into a new imperialist war: after Ethiopia—Spain, then China, for the conquest of which Japan had put more than a million men under arms. In the autumn of 1938 Japan launched an armed attack on the territory of the USSR at Lake Khasan, but was repulsed. Austria and Czechoslovakia fell victim to fascist aggression in Europe.

p In every case of aggression the “axis” countries flew the flag of anti-communism and ensured themselves the invariable connivance of the “democratic” states of France, Britain and the U.S.A.

p At the outset of the mass intervention in Spain, in October 1936, Hitler stated in a conversation with Ciano: “We must go over to the attack. And the tactical field on which we must execute the manoeuvre is that of anti-Bolshevism. In fact, many countries which are suspicious of Italo-German friendship for fear of 372 Pan-Germanism or Italian imperialism and would join the opposing camp, will be brought to group themselves with us if they see in Italo-German unity the barrier against the Bolshevik menace at home and abroad."  [372•1 

p The Munich pact between Britain and France on one side and Germany and Italy on the other on the division of Czechoslovakia was the biggest but not the last bait that was thrown to nazi Germany in the hope of turning her against the USSR. The next victim was Spain.

p The blockade at sea and on the Franco-Spanish frontier was strangling the Republic. With its stores empty of ammunition after the battle on the River Ebro and with unreplenished losses of rifles, machine-guns, artillery, tanks and aircraft, the Republican Army faced the December 1938 offensive on Catalonia by 400,000 fascist troops and was broken in an unequal struggle. The fall of Catalonia was the prologue to the defeat of the Spanish people in March 1939. In the final days of the Catalonian tragedy, in an attempt to save hundreds of thousands of refugees—women, children and old men fleeing from the fascist plague to the French frontier—the internationalists who were still in Spain awaiting evacuation once again took up arms to check the forward enemy units in rearguard actions.

p The tragedy of Catalonia raised a new wave of solidarity with Spain and protests against the fascist warmongers. The Soviet Government did everything it could to effect transit of the arms ordered by the Spanish Government through France to Catalonia, but when the French Government eventually agreed to allow the arms across the frontier it was too late.

p Persistent demands to end the policy of encouraging aggression came from the peoples of Britain, France and the United States. Unfortunately, however, the forces of democracy were unable (largely because of the lack of unity between the parties and organisations of the working class) to force their governments to carry out the will of the peoples. Europe and the whole world were soon to endure the disasters of the Second World War.

p The former international volunteers, many of them with wounds unhealed from the battlefields of Spain, again threw themselves into the struggle. From their ranks came many gifted generals and other military leaders of the Soviet Armed Forces and the national-liberation armies of several countries of Europe. Many members of the International Brigades became selfless fighters in the European Resistance during the Second World War, fearless underground fighters, commanders and soldiers of the guerrilla detachments, intelligence agents and couriers.

p The Soviet Union and its armed forces played the decisive role 373 in the defeat of the fascist powers. The battles against fascism, which had begun in Madrid, reached their culmination in the great struggle of the Soviet armies for Berlin and the unconditional surrender of Hitler Germany.

p In the decades that have passed since the national-revolutionary war in Spain the political face of the world has changed. The world socialist system of states has grown up and acquired solid shape; dozens of new independent developing countries have been built on the ruins of the colonial empires in Asia and Africa. Imperialism has lost its monopoly power over the fate of nations, the forces of peace and progress have increased and their influence on the course of events has grown tremendously. But many of the problems that worried people in the thirties retain their vital importance today.

p Those of the older generation look back over the years and realise the meaning of their experience in the thirties; the young people turn to them in their search for models on which to base their own actions. Hence the growing interest in recent years in the "stormy thirties”, in the events of the Spanish war, the international movement of solidarity with the Spanish people, and the splendid achievement of the vanguard of that solidarity—the volunteers of the International Brigades.

The veterans of the International Brigades of twenty-one countries who wrote this book—a unique account of events by those who participated in them—hope that it will make good reading for both the older and younger generations, for all those who wish to draw from the experience of the past lessons that will be of use in work and struggle for a better future.

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