What I Am Reading: "Spain In Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War" by Adam Hochschild

"What are you thinking about?" Miss Saeki asks me.

"About going to Spain," I reply.

"What are you going to do there?"

"Eat some delicious paella."

“That's all?"

"And fight in the Spanish Civil War."

-Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

No self-imposed coursework on the rise of fascism is complete without a book on the Spanish Civil War, the only war (as something I read once said) where the history was written by the losers, perhaps because they went on to win the larger war against fascism. When I was a teenager, I read Antony Beevor's The Battle for Spain, and I was pleased to find my memory of the subject rush back while reading this book.

Beevor's book is definitely the premier source, as far as I am concerned, for a comprehensive and political look at the war. This book, written by Adam Hochschild, the author of King Leopold's Ghost (another book I enjoyed as a teen) is much more of a narrative history, focusing on American members of the Washington-Lincoln Battallion of the International Brigades, as well as medical volunteers and journalists. Though some of the figures, such as Ernest Hemingway, are famous, this is mostly a look at ground-level participants, noteworthy mainly for their participation; and not political or diplomatic figures. If one were looking for the latter in regards to the American side of things, there is FDR and the Spanish Civil War, by Dominic Tierney, which I read a couple of summers ago.

The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 when the young Second Spanish Republic elected a left-wing Popular Front government made up of a coalition of socialists, communists, liberals, and anarchists (these mainly from the Catalonia region). Shortly thereafter, the government faced a military revolt led by its reactionary officer corps in Spanish Morocco, eventually dominated by Gen. Francisco Franco. One of the interesting notes in this book that I hadn't read previously was how Franco's army, transported by Nazi airlift across the Alboran Sea, was largely made up of Moorish troops; and that Franco's side would later put racial prejudice to propaganda use by spreading word that Republican villagers overrun by these troops could fear rape at their hands.

Anyway, grim digression aside, Franco received considerable political backing from the conservatives, fascists, and reactionaries firmly ensconced in a country that had not made much progress in putting feudal roots behind it; meaning that noblemen and the Catholic Church stood side-to-side with more modern reactionaries such as the falangists (Spain's version of fascism) and American oil tycoons.

The most important narrative on the Republican side is that the major democracies, for reasons of division (France), appeasement policies (Britain), or isolationism (the US), refused to send any adequate military support or sell the Republic the weapons and supplies it needed in enough capacity to make a difference. This was contrasted with Hitler and Mussolini's support for Franco, with his military and especially air force serving as a testing ground for their weapons and tactics. The Republicans, meanwhile, received substantive support only from the Soviet Union and Mexico, but they also took in hundreds of volunteers from around the world to fight in the International Brigades. Enough Americans served that there was a Washington Battalion and a Lincoln Battalion, later merged, in the XV International Brigade.

This battalion is where much of the story’s meat comes from, as various Americans served until they were mustered out in late 1938. Many of these participants wrote memoirs, which provide a lot of grisly combat writing and stories of hardship, privation, death, and atrocities. Hochschild says that the American volunteers came from all over the country, but on average, a volunteer was a Jewish Communist from New York. One of the most-noted figures was Bob Merriman, a PhD student in California before the war who went to Spain with his wife, Marion, who served as a medical volunteer and sometimes traveled to the front with him. Journalists appearing include Hemingway, a correspondent and fervent Republic believer/propagandist whom I find to be an insufferable blowhard, Orwell, who spent his time observing the social revolution in Catalonia, famous war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, Virginia Cowles, critic of communism, and others. Some interesting members of the International Brigade make brief or repeated appearances, such as Oliver Law, Lincoln Battalion commander, the first black officer to command an integrated American unit, and Maj. George Nathan, the Chief of Staff of the British Battalion, an openly gay officer who was apparently also (according to his Wiki page) a Black and Tan in the Irish War of Independence. There was also Vladimir Ćopić, Yugoslav commander of the Brigade who was known as a doctrinaire and inflexible Communist who was later executed by Stalin, and French commissar André Marty, who had many volunteers executed for ideological deviation.

Anyway, specifics aside, the history of the Spanish Civil War is one of the Republicans gradually losing ground while agitating in vain for foreign assistance, as they are pushed back to the Mediterranean. Highlights include the Siege of Madrid, which ran the length of the war and subject of an inspiring Republican victory early on as they defeated a Nationalist push to take the city. Journalists set up in the city's hotel and had a panoramic view of the battlefield, and the siege is highly romanticized in their accounts. Meanwhile, in Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia, the "Spanish Revolution" occurred where anarchist communes took over farms and businesses, and defended them with their own militia. The anarchist organization, the POUM (Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification) was eventually squeezed out by the Communists in 1937. This is the subject of Orwell's writing; I promise that someday I will read Homage to Catalonia, but I might try to group it with some other Spanish Civil War memoirs. The section on Catalonia is when the political higher-ups make some of their rare appearances: the dispute between the anarchists and the Communists causes the resignation of PM Francisco Largo Caballero, whom I recall considering the best Spanish Republican leader when I read Beevor's book; replaced by Juan Negrín, who managed to maneuver things well enough that the Communists only executed a few people instead of instituting a reign of terror, and continued their support of the Republic. Negrín would be the last leader of the Republicans, proceeding to exile in France. Also appearing a few times is Lluís Companys, the President of Catalonia at the time, who worked in loose alliance with the anarchists and would later be executed by the Francoist regime.

The International Brigades saw much of the war's heaviest fighting, and all of the gritty and tragic detail is related as the Republican position deteriorates and Franco eventually pushes to the sea and cuts Catalonia off from Madrid. One American included who is responsible for this on the other side was Torkild Rieber, an executive at Texaco who provided oil on credit to Franco's regime, and also used Texaco's network to provide intelligence on Republican oil shipments, often sunk by Nationalist or German/Italian air power or submarines.

I have all kinds of notes on the Spanish Civil War from this and other readings: that there was a negative feedback loop between Western powers not wanting to support a government beholden to Communists and the Republic becoming more beholden to Communists because the Soviets were their only supply source; how both sides committed atrocities but the atrocities on the Republican side were more spontaneous and were stifled by the government while the Nationalist atrocities were systematic and repressive; and others. But regarding this book, I just want to say that it fully embraced the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, remembered romantically by writers and artists ever since, helped along by Hemingway, Picasso, and others like poet Federico García Lorca, whose body was never found. Spanish, American, and other volunteers starve, are executed, have their limbs blown off and their hospitals bombed, swim naked across raging rivers, love, and are inspired and inspiring. Survivors were regarded suspiciously by their own governments. As I have related elsewhere, many crossed into France, where they were interned by the government and then held by the Nazis, with some taking to the hills to continue the battle, unthanked by de Gaulle and the official histories. I don't know if I will ever go to Spain, but if I do I intend to seek out the memory of the Civil War itself, and of the Americans and other foreigners who were inspired enough to travel there, usually to their own deaths.