While the transnational turn may now be decades old, certain areas of historical research have taken longer than others to follow course. This includes, somewhat incongruously, the study of anti-fascist politics in interwar Europe. Not only was this an internationalist political phenomenon that demonstrably crossed borders in any number of ways, anti-fascist movements also generated a broad array of transnational actors, in the form of migrants, exiles and political activists. This is a subject for which, as Hugo García has noted, there remains a great deal of unrealised potential for transnational methods and analysis.Footnote 1 Perhaps the most significant of these transnational mobilisations took place in response to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936.Footnote 2 Though far from the only transnational participants in this conflict, the best-known were the International Brigades, whose ranks were joined by at least 32,000 foreign volunteers who journeyed to Spain in order to support the beleaguered Spanish Republicans against the fascist-backed military uprising.Footnote 3 While they made up only a small fraction of the Republican armed forces, they received disproportionate attention at the time and since as highly visible symbols of international anti-fascist solidarity, seen as brave, selfless individuals who took a personal stand against European fascism while Western democracies pursued morally and practically flawed policies of appeasement.Footnote 4
The International Brigades – like the Spanish Civil War more broadly – have been subject to detailed historical scrutiny. However, renewed interest in the International Brigades has been stimulated not only by the ‘new’ transnational turn in studies of European anti-fascisms but also by the contemporary prominence of ‘foreign fighters’ in the Islamic world.Footnote 5 The use and misuse of such historical parallels to understand transnational mobilisations in the present day has inspired a wave of scholarship seeking to historicise the phenomenon in new ways.Footnote 6 The International Brigades hold a unique place in these efforts: as the largest such mobilisation of transnational volunteers prior to the present day, they have become a natural point of reference for exploring similarities and divergences across case studies. The current study seeks to contribute to these discussions, by highlighting a neglected yet common feature of all such mobilisations: the inevitable encounters between foreign fighters and their local counterparts.Footnote 7 Not only were these interactions vital in shaping the lived experience of volunteering, but their relations with the Spanish volunteers and conscripts they served alongside inevitably affected the International Brigades’ cohesion, morale and military effectiveness. Maintaining good relations between local and foreign soldiers was of paramount political importance, not least because any breakdown of relations could rapidly lead to disillusionment and demoralisation on both sides.
Remarkably little attention has been paid to the relationships between the foreign volunteers and their Spanish comrades in arms. To some extent, this reflects an older tendency to fall back on ‘national’ perspectives, exploring individual contingents in relative isolation.Footnote 8 In such accounts, transnational elements are dealt with chiefly from an international perspective; the defection of an Irish group to an American unit after falling out with the British, for instance, has been thoroughly explored.Footnote 9 This account builds instead on the recent work of Lisa Kirschenbaum, Gerben Zaagsma, Samuël Kruizinga, Jorge Marco and Maria Thomas, exploring questions such as language, identity and political cultures that cut across ‘national’ groupings.Footnote 10 However, relations between the International Brigade volunteers and their Spanish comrades remain largely unexplored.Footnote 11 Yet these relationships and encounters shaped not only the everyday lived experience of the International Brigades for foreigners and Spaniards alike, but also affected the cohesion, stability and effectiveness of these units throughout their time in Spain. While different national groupings encountered one another to a varying degree, almost all foreign volunteers found themselves in frequent contact with Spanish soldiers.
The focus here is on the English-speaking XV International Brigade.Footnote 12 This is partly a sample of convenience – as Gerben Zaagsma has noted, the sheer linguistic diversity of the International Brigades confounds broad transnational approaches, and this unit best reflects the author's linguistic capabilities.Footnote 13 Yet it also is far from completely unrepresentative of the range of possible encounters and experiences in the International Brigades more broadly. Despite being dominated by Canadians, Britons and especially Americans, the XV Brigade was hardly homogeneous, and even nominally English-speaking units contained significant numbers of European exiles and migrants. While some were essentially monolingual and struggled to develop the language skills required to operate in a Spanish army, others, notably the many Cubans serving in the American ‘Abraham Lincoln’ Battalion, were able to integrate smoothly.Footnote 14 It is also important to acknowledge that there were two sides to these interactions. Spaniards were not static objects for the volunteers to interact with, and their agency was a critical factor in shaping the encounters examined here. As such, a key priority has been locating Spanish perspectives, both within and beyond the records of the International Brigades themselves.Footnote 15
The purpose of employing an explicitly transnational framework is twofold. The first reflects the simple reality that the foreign volunteers in Spain were archetypical transnational actors. They utilised transnational networks to cross borders, often in open defiance of the wishes of their governments. Their very decision challenged the norm that military service – and the legitimate employment of violence more broadly – should be the preserve of the nation-state. Secondly, and most importantly, this article seeks to build on Michael Goebel's argument that historians should move beyond using transnationalism to uncover new perspectives and tell new stories, and make the case for why the movement of people and ideas across borders led to specific, concrete outcomes.Footnote 16 In this sense, the goal here is to interrogate why it mattered that the International Brigades were a transnational army that threw participants into a series of unusual and largely unprecedented encounters and relationships, and how this helps explain their nature and functioning more broadly.
As such, beyond exploring new aspects of volunteers’ experiences in Spain, this article's goal is to establish that relations between Spaniards and foreigners in the International Brigades were shaped by a series of persistent structural factors relating to their nature and purpose. There is a tendency in historical writing on the International Brigades to consider negative interactions as either isolated incidents, or, in revisionist accounts, evidence for the fundamentally flawed or even sinister nature of the enterprise.Footnote 17 This account contends that such encounters were not isolated or random – or indeed straightforwardly categorised as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – but were instead the product of specific issues tied to the transnational basis of the undertaking. Rather than one-off occurrences, relations at both an institutional and interpersonal level led to a series of recurring problems that stemmed from a series of material, cultural and political factors. That is not to say that relations between foreigners and Spaniards were static – they were influenced by changing circumstances and the efforts of participants on both sides – but rather that they reflected underlying tension at the heart of the International Brigades’ conception and organisation.
Spanish Voices
While historians have not hidden the reality that the majority of those who served in the International Brigades were Spaniards, for the most part they have not explored the consequences in any detail. This is especially notable in accounts dealing with the English-speaking volunteers. It takes a close reading of Daniel Gray's book on the Scots, for instance, to find any mention of the many Spaniards they served alongside.Footnote 18 While Richard Baxell devotes several pages to discussing tensions between the various national groups, including the Spaniards, his analysis is grounded in British and other international sources, and does relatively little to explore and explain how these relationships developed.Footnote 19 In contrast, Cecil Eby was fortunate to gain private access to a memoir written by a Spanish member of the XV International Brigade, and his account goes furthest in dealing with Spanish experiences of serving in English-speaking units.Footnote 20 Yet as valuable as this memoir is – it is used here where appropriate – it cannot be considered as definitive in isolation. While the vignettes provided are often illuminating, Eby rarely supplements the author's words with perspectives that allow for broader conclusions to be drawn.Footnote 21
The goal here is to add depth to historical understandings of the relationship between international volunteers and their Spanish comrades. It is important to move beyond simple binaries – were relations good or bad? – and attempt to understand the dynamics that shaped perceptions on both sides. In particular, it is necessary to locate Spanish perspectives within the International Brigades, an issue complicated by the relative absence of ego-documents produced by their Spanish members. However, James Matthews's work on conscripts in the Spanish Civil War offers an example of how a range of voices can be found in the records of the Spanish Republican Army itself. In particular, the Republican Army's report-generating network of political commissars and their perennial concern with morale can provide considerable insight into rank-and-file perspectives.Footnote 22 In the specific context of the International Brigades, relations between Spaniards and foreigners were of ongoing concern to the military and political leadership, and a great deal of effort was spent addressing actual and potential grievances on both sides, as well as monitoring soldiers’ opinions and morale through observation and censorship, generating a significant yet neglected source base.
Yet whilst it is possible to build a detailed picture of who the foreign volunteers were in both an individual and demographic sense, their Spanish comrades still present a more formidable challenge.Footnote 23 The International Brigades showed little administrative interest in their Spanish members. Beyond making occasional lists of soldiers in various units, the International Brigades rarely recorded basic information such as their political affiliation, point of origin, age or occupation.Footnote 24 Tracing these names back to Spanish military archives to find enlistment records would be a Herculean task. Such records remain in local military districts, and even attempting to match a small sample is rendered impossible by the lack of contextual information in International Brigade records that might narrow the search. This task is well beyond the scope of this study, and likely any future studies, barring the wholesale digitisation of these records across Spain.
However, the Franco regime's post-war persecution does offer some insight into the collective identity of the Spanish soldiers in the International Brigades. As part of broader efforts to catalogue potential opponents, captured Republican documents were used to establish the nature of individuals’ wartime service on a massive scale. International Brigade hospital records and paysheets were archived and used to compile lists of thousands of Spaniards who served in the International Brigades.Footnote 25 From the inconsistent information available in these lists, a rough picture emerges. Spanish members of the International Brigades tended to be of roughly the same age as the foreign volunteers, with an average age of twenty-nine, though the number of Spaniards aged twenty-five or under was somewhat higher. They were more likely to be agricultural workers or otherwise come from rural areas than the mainly urban-dwelling foreigners, with the most common listed occupations being ‘farmer’ (agricultor) or ‘labourer’ (jornalero), compared to ‘seaman’, ‘driver’ or ‘mechanic’ for the Americans, as well as ‘miner’ for the British and Canadians.Footnote 26 Interestingly, English-speaking units contained a disproportionate number of Spaniards in the list, with nearly a third of the sample belonging to the XV International Brigade.Footnote 27 There are two possible explanations. First, due to relatively low recruitment from English-speaking countries, more Spanish recruits were required to keep this brigade at full strength.Footnote 28 Second, the XV Brigade suffered disproportionate casualties in various actions, notably Jarama, Brunete and Calaceite, not only increasing personnel turnover, but also increasing their visibility in hospital records. The appearance of so many Spanish casualties in International Brigade hospital lists is in itself noteworthy. While it is difficult to judge precisely how many of these cases reflected disease, accidents or even self-inflicted wounds, they nonetheless cast doubt on a common narrative – that the international volunteers were more willing to risk themselves for Spanish freedom than the Spaniards themselves.Footnote 29
Conscripts and Commissars
Although the first Spaniards incorporated into the International Brigades were volunteers, this did not remain the case for long. The bulk of rank-and-file recruits were conscripts from spring 1937 onwards, soon after the XV Brigade was founded.Footnote 30 In particular, after the disastrous Aragon retreats in March 1938, the brigade was brought up to strength by incorporating large numbers of newly-conscripted Catalan youths. As a Nationalist intelligence report noted, they had received little training, and represented a significant decline in the unit's perceived quality.Footnote 31 While Nationalist intelligence reports were prone to declaring their opponents to be demoralised and poorly motivated at every possible juncture, there is little doubt that recruits’ suitability declined over the course of the war, as it did for the Republican Army as a whole, exacerbating some of the issues explored below.Footnote 32 For the overall purposes of this study, the key implication is that unlike their foreign counterparts, most Spanish members of the XV Brigade had not chosen to join this unusual organisation. Rather, they found themselves having to navigate a strange new environment, shaped by generally unfamiliar transnational modes of thinking, organisation and politics.
For Spanish conscripts, this realisation could come as a sudden shock. Valencian conscript Fausto Villar Esteban made it clear that the International Brigades’ reputation preceded them: he described them as the ‘most prestigious of all’ the Republic's ‘shock forces’, likening it to joining the Francoist Foreign Legion.Footnote 33 While this came with perks in terms of access to better supplies and rations, there were significant downsides of serving in the International Brigades for Spanish conscripts. After being told that ‘no one leaves except feet first and covered in glory’, Villar Esteban wrote that the words ‘cut us deeper than the chill of that brisk autumn night . . . We were, every one of us, dumbfounded’.Footnote 34 This was no idle boast. The International Brigades were in action much more often than other units, and suffered extremely high casualties.Footnote 35 According to one deserter to the Nationalists in May 1938, Spaniards resisted being assigned to the International Brigades as they were ‘more risky’.Footnote 36 There were other disadvantages – for example, the International Brigades received less leave than other units.Footnote 37 This led to grumbling among foreign and Spanish troops alike, but was perhaps especially acute for Spaniards, as several days leave offered the chance to see family and loved ones, rather than simply a chance for rest and recreation behind the lines.Footnote 38 These issues led to attempts to evade service altogether – a July 1937 memorandum noted the increase of self-inflicted wounds and desertion among Spanish recruits to the XV Brigade, and it was judged that many desertion cases were of Spaniards seeking to join regular Republican units rather than to the rear or the enemy, as was the norm elsewhere.Footnote 39
Even everyday life in the International Brigades could give rise to friction. Just managing to feed each group was an exercise in culinary diplomacy. While different national contingents preferred different food – many English-speaking volunteers had an instinctive distrust of Spanish cooking – these very differences could easily lead to allegations that one group was favoured over the other.Footnote 40 The International Brigades’ right to supplement their rations ‘to suit the tastes and needs of each unit’ was enshrined by a decree from the Ministry of National Defence in October 1937, doubtless formalising a practice that already existed.Footnote 41 Yet this did not necessarily help Spaniards serving in international units, whose diets were still being shaped by the preferences of their foreign comrades. One report from December 1937 mentioned a particular disagreement along these lines, with Spaniards complaining that sugar was never available for their coffee, ‘the implication being that the internationals use the sugar for sweet rice which Spaniards dislike’.Footnote 42 Such issues reflected a fundamental problem with different national groups serving side by side in close proximity – treating everyone the same would please nobody, while treatment according to national preferences risked being seen as favouritism.
The International Brigades’ association with communism could also cause friction.Footnote 43 Rank-and-file Spanish recruits came from a wider variety of political backgrounds compared to the foreigners, especially in 1938 when the Brigade received reinforcements almost exclusively from Catalonia, which led to increased numbers of anarchists in their ranks. Spanish units still tended to be led by communists, as either open party members or the communist-dominated Unified Socialist Youth (Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas).Footnote 44 In one list of XV Brigade commissars and political delegates from February 1938, only two Spaniards with alternative political affiliations were recorded: one each from the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) and the anarchist National Confederation of Labour (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo; CNT).Footnote 45 Such documents broadly confirm the observations of British volunteer Garry McCartney, who ‘never [knew] any commissar of any battalion to be other than Communist’.Footnote 46
This list was indicative of a broader issue that caused tension between Spanish recruits and the International Brigade leadership throughout the conflict – the tendency on one hand to view political development as a solution to morale and discipline problems while, on the other, having to accommodate a wide variety of political beliefs. Commissars were simultaneously expected to instil communist discipline and political understanding in their charges yet were nominally forbidden from attempting to extoll communism itself. There was no pleasing both sides. Any attempt to instil a communist ethos among Spanish recruits led to considerable concern from other Republican parties.Footnote 47 Even before the influx of large numbers of Catalonian recruits, the Defence Section of the CNT National Committee was receiving bitter reports from its members.
They have noted a deterioration because of stupid disciplinary measures, which do not allow militiamen to read a newspaper or statement that is not of a communist tendency. They are detained for merely wearing libertarian insignia or a red-black scarf. It would be desirable to see if it is possible to release these unhappy people from this troubled situation.Footnote 48
It is less clear whether such complaints were based on fact or rumour.Footnote 49 Yet there is no doubt that for non-communist recruits, navigating the XV Brigade's unusual political cultures presented difficulties. Fausto Villar Esteban – who was not even an anarchist – recalled the difficulties of ‘speaking his mind’ without being labelled ‘a defeatist or even a fascist’ by his American comrades.Footnote 50 Moreover, as communists themselves acknowledged, it was easy for misunderstandings to emerge. One report noted that the ‘very obvious and clumsy’ efforts to carry out Party work in the XV Brigade meant that:
It appeared that the Communists were trying to ‘hide’ something from the rest of the troops. Naturally this did not help, but hurt, the unity between the Communists and others in the brigade – the non-party, anarchist, and others. This was especially evidenced among the Spanish comrades.Footnote 51
Although such incidents may have stemmed in part from misapprehensions, this risk was inherent in the constant injunctions for more intense political work as a catch-all solution to organisational, disciplinary and even military problems. This situation did not escape the notice of other Spanish organisations. In one communiqué to the Political Commissar of the XV Brigade in April 1938, the Defence Section of the CNT National Committee noted the presence of some 500 ‘libertarians’ in the XV Brigade, demanding that a commission be established to:
(a) Send regular propaganda to the Brigade.
(b) Appoint a responsible comrade to handle their Brigade's communication and propaganda matters.
(c) Spend May 1st with them and take part in the activities commemorating the date.
(d) Have a union sponsor a battalion.Footnote 52
Beyond a natural interest in the welfare of their membership, such interventions reflected longstanding concerns about the very existence of the International Brigades. These stemmed in part from fears that their adherents might be converted by communist propaganda. However, anxiety about communist proselytisation should also be understood as part of a broader apprehension that the International Brigades were part of the Spanish Communist Party's push for greater control over the war effort.Footnote 53 Other parties feared the possibility that the International Brigades might be used as tools against internal rivals.Footnote 54 While these concerns generally remained private, and most Republican groups expressed public appreciation for the foreign volunteers as a symbol of international solidarity, it nonetheless meant that the International Brigades’ internal politics were a matter of ongoing significance, and other parties took any chance to dilute or check communist influence.
Although such issues continued to raise hackles throughout the conflict, they were to a large extent both understood and addressed by the brigade leadership. This often involved something akin to diplomacy, with carefully choreographed visits from delegations, and exchanges of carefully worded declarations and assurances of good faith.Footnote 55 This was matched by efforts within the brigades to ease tension, particularly through the political commissariat. By later stages of the war, the International Brigades had grown more responsive to the varying needs of its Spanish soldiers.Footnote 56 Tom Murray, who served as a political commissar from April 1938, recalled some everyday provisions.
One of my jobs in this connection was to distribute the press, to make sure that all the members who wanted to could get copies of the Spanish press. And I had to be careful that. . . papers of a Catalan quality had to be given to the Catalans.Footnote 57
However, the process by which Spaniards were integrated and catered for in the International Brigades was a slow one, doubtless undermined by the frequent changes in personnel and leadership due to high casualties and reassignments after bloody battles. Even by December 1937, it was clear that there were still distinct problems that were far from resolved in the British Battalion.
Amongst the Spanish comrades there is no party organisation, few party members and a great number of recruits who have no political understanding and amongst whom a great amount of political work should be but is not done. The language difficulty and the low political level makes it exceedingly difficult to know what elements are responsible for the undiscipline [sic] that shows itself from time to time.Footnote 58
While it is tempting to dismiss this and other reports’ obsession with party organisation and work as political correctness gone mad, the lack of a Spanish political representative undermined the battalion's ability to cater for their needs in very concrete ways. The report's recommendation that ‘a Spanish comrade be found capable of being responsible for Spanish comrades politically’ aimed to address practical sources of discontent amongst the Spanish troops. It was recommended that the candidate be given equal rank to Battalion Political Commissar Wally Tapsell, or at least made his adjutant, an important symbolic step in cementing the status of both Spanish soldiers and their particular needs. Moreover, the recommended ‘first task’ was eminently practical.
[To] organise the feeding of Spanish comrades so that their rations are separately cooked to disprove once and for all of any suggestion that Internationals are living at the expense of Spanish comrades … without disorganising things by undue complication the feeding and clothing of Spanish comrades should be controlled by a Spanish comrade.Footnote 59
In this case, the commissariat was working as intended.Footnote 60 It is clear that the author appreciated the substance of complaints, and recommended steps to rectify these issues that were both politically symbolic and straightforwardly practical, reflecting the reality that the intended role of political commissars was conceived as being broadly pastoral as well as political. However, this report, coming as it did nearly a year after the founding of the XV Brigade, and many months after it started integrating Spanish recruits, shows that the system was often more reactive than proactive. While mechanisms did exist for positive change for Spanish and International soldiers alike, they worked slowly. Moreover, until capable and effective commissars were found for the Spanish sections, the ability of the institution to address problems was limited.Footnote 61 As a result, these problems lingered throughout the International Brigades’ tenure in Spain.
Everyday Encounters
Although material and political issues were never fully resolved during the International Brigades’ tenure in Spain, for most Spaniards in their ranks these were reasons to resent the institution of the International Brigades rather than the volunteers themselves. Especially as the volunteers themselves shouldered their share of hardship and sacrifice, they were hardly the logical targets for complaints about politics, provisioning and leave. Even those Spaniards who resented serving in these units recognised that these issues were separate. Fausto Villar Esteban, who was often critical of the International Brigades and the Communist Party in his memoir, still expressed emotionally-charged gratitude to the volunteers themselves.
Thanks, for the generous, ready offering of their lives . . . Thanks, for their disinterested commitment, because the material assistance afforded to both sides had been handsomely paid for . . . Only the men of the International Brigades levied no charge.Footnote 62
The very real frustration felt by many Spaniards serving in the XV Brigade should not, therefore, be taken as evidence that everyday interpersonal relations were generally sour. For their part certainly, the internationals tended to view their contacts with Spanish comrades extremely positively. This was perhaps especially so for the many volunteers who proved unable or unwilling to learn Spanish, who often simply lacked direct knowledge of Spanish comrades’ gripes and concerns.Footnote 63 Being unable to communicate complex ideas, most volunteers were content with establishing basic goodwill – as William Gilmour put it in a letter: ‘in spite of the difficulties of language and customs, [we] understand each other spiritually as we are all imbued with the same antifascist spirit’.Footnote 64 Similarly, George Murray poked fun at his own linguistic incompetence:
We have a Spanish class here and I am now a fluent linguist. My Spanish is so good that the Spaniards hardly understand a word I am saying! We must have them educated! Despite the language barrier, which is a perpetual nuisance, I have made good friends in many nationalities.Footnote 65
Even those directly commanding Spanish soldiers, such as English officer Walter Gregory, often managed to build only a ‘rudimentary’ command of Spanish, though Gregory still reported ‘[getting] along with them extremely well’.Footnote 66 While volunteer accounts likely have a tendency to downplay incidents and tensions with their local counterparts, there is little reason to doubt that there often existed considerable mutual goodwill across the linguistic divide.
As hinted by Gilmour, relations were also smoothed by a common language of solidarity. Most volunteers were quick to learn and use the verbal and non-verbal expressions of the Popular Front, such as the clenched-fist salute and ubiquitous slogans such as ¡No Pasarán!, ¡Salud! and camaradas.Footnote 67 Alec Park's description was particularly evocative of the sights and sounds of solidarity the volunteers encountered in Spain.
The Spanish people themselves welcome our assistance and on all hands we are greeted with ‘Salud Camarada’, even by the children. They have been celebrating Lenin's birthday, in the market square there is a large picture of Lenin on a red banner, at night there is lit up a large red star and all around the balconies of the buildings display pictures of the various Soviet and Spanish Republican leaders amidst the Republican colours.Footnote 68
For their part, foreign volunteers were thrilled to exchange such gestures with Spaniards – the experience and reciprocation of solidarity represented an important affirmation of the power and rightness of their own political beliefs and purpose in coming to Spain. Such interactions were often superficial yet sufficed to establish goodwill and common purpose. There was, however, a danger that having established basic common ground with their Spanish comrades, more complex underlying issues were not addressed or understood by the international volunteers, allowing problems to fester.
However, not all of these problems were likely to affect relationships amongst rank-and-file soldiers. Systemic issues such as rations and leave allowances were patently not the volunteers’ fault, and involving them in their complaints – even if this could have been communicated – made little sense. Yet this inability to communicate effectively did have consequences. Not only was a working knowledge of Spanish immensely important in a Spanish-speaking army, but there was perceived political value in volunteers learning and speaking Spanish. Articles in Nuestro Combate and Volunteer for Liberty, the XV Brigade newspapers, often hammered home the need for volunteers to learn Spanish:
American and British comrades, learn Spanish! . . . We must learn Spanish in order to fulfill our mission here with the maximum effectiveness. This effectiveness demands the closest and most intimate relationship possible with our Spanish fellow-fighters in our Brigade.Footnote 69
Such articles were accompanied by a range of practical initiatives, from language classes to a specially designed English-Spanish grammar book.Footnote 70 While encouragement to learn Spanish was often phrased positively – it could hardly be openly admitted that relations between Spaniards and internationals were anything other than excellent – the underlying message was that language was not only of practical benefit but a major barrier preventing meaningful integration and understanding between the Spanish and foreign soldiers. This was echoed in the public and private statements and reports of the commissariat. The issue was stated plainly at a conference in November 1937.
More and more we need to thoroughly absorb and act upon the idea that we are now a part of the Spanish army [and] that we are as responsible for the Spanish comrades in our base, battalion and hospitals as much as for the British and to interest ourselves in every way in their life and problems. An elementary knowledge of the Spanish language is essential for every one of us.Footnote 71
This oft-expressed concern about the language barrier between Spanish and English-speaking soldiers reflects a more pervasive issue that haunted the International Brigades – that a lack of rapport or respect between Spaniards and foreigners was undermining their ability to cooperate effectively. This was of particular concern on the battlefield. Many English-speaking volunteers came to view the Spanish troops as unreliable and less willing to fight for the cause than the foreign volunteers. British Commissar Wally Tapsell, writing after the bloodbath at Brunete, was particularly vehement.
In plain fact, and it is hard to state this, on every occasion we were with Spanish troops in this engagement they let us down. Their behaviour on every occasion either resulted in serious casualties, or the immediate loss of positions won by us at heavy cost. This is a fact. I cannot speak for other Spanish troops, this is the hard fact of our experience. Consequently one of the biggest, if not the biggest morale question in the Battalion is – why such behaviour from the Spanish troops. Pious prattle does not satisfy men who have been wounded, who have seen their pals and brothers shot down, wounded and killed and have a clear and truthful picture of what transpired.Footnote 72
Similar views can be detected in volunteers’ subsequent writing and testimony, although often couched euphemistically. Hamish Fraser was notably blunt:
The despair of the Republic was its inability to rely on any troops other than those units which were composed of, organized and led by Communists . . . No International Brigader [sic] is likely to dispute this. Indeed, that so many of the Brigaders [sic] drenched the soil of Spain so liberally with their blood was tribute to more than their mistaken idealism (and the Brigades were as a whole representative of the cream of the working class); their blood was [a] willing tribute to the confidence the Spanish people did not have in the government of the Republic.Footnote 73
Fraser had clear personal reasons to downplay the Republic's popular support and the willingness of its citizens to defend it, having converted from fervent communism to equally fervent Catholicism during the 1940s. Yet his words reflect other volunteers’ more tactful views about the Spanish troops’ effectiveness. Responding to a question about whether the Spaniards needed the International Brigades because they were not willing to fight themselves, Sydney Quinn replied:
Unlike Britain, France, Germany . . . they'd lost their empire over a long period. They never had soldiers abroad, you know, and little wars and they never [had] been involved in the world war and their military knowledge and experience among the top, well the top leadership had deserted to the Fascists . . . it was just the fact that in that particular field at [that] particular time they just didn't have enough experience, and the Internationals played that role, gave the necessary experience.Footnote 74
Quinn's statement represents a more typical opinion of Spanish soldiers. While neither hostile nor doubtful of their commitment, most volunteers were condescending regarding Spaniards’ fighting ability. In part, these attitudes harken back to their very motivation in coming to Spain, and their preconceived notions about the nature of the struggle. Spain was seen as the defenceless victim of militaristic fascism. While the Spanish people were undoubtedly heroic in volunteers’ eyes, this heroism was constructed in passive terms of resistance and suffering, serving to highlight their primary status as victims. John Londragan went further than most in describing Spanish soldiers as ‘very childlike’: ‘they had never been involved in war before and had known nothing about it at all’.Footnote 75 The International Brigades’ role became that of an older, more experienced sibling – there to ‘stiffen up the Spaniards’, in the words of James Maley, who judged that that ‘the Spaniards, they're like the Italians. They're just not like British or German soldiers’.Footnote 76 Nor were such attitudes confined to the rank-and-file: Tom Wintringham, a prominent early commander of the British Battalion, expressed similar sentiments when justifying the need for the International Brigades.
How could these incredibly gallant Spaniards get hold of the art, the science, the discipline of war? By example and by training, given them by foreigners.Footnote 77
While generally well meant, these attitudes had the potential to seriously disrupt relations between Spaniards and international volunteers. While complaints about material conditions were not necessarily something that soured relations between individual soldiers, perceived disrespect was a different matter. One report from January 1938 specifically singled out the British:
As to the relations between the Spanish and internationals, they are not satisfactory. In the Battalions of this Brigade, especially in the British Battalion, there exists a conception of superiority that makes them view the Spanish fighters with some contempt, demonstrated when even low-ranking soldiers do not treat Spanish commanders with the same respect and obedience as those who speak English.Footnote 78
This, as the report made clear, was a source of considerable frustration for Spanish officers, many of whom were considerably more experienced than their international counterparts. Another report from August 1937 makes it clear that complaints about Spanish troops were already a well-established phenomenon:
Savage and unjustified criticism of Spanish troops was heard, particularly from the weakest comrades. It must be understood that the attitude taken towards the Spanish comrades is perhaps the surest of all morale barometers.Footnote 79
Such animosity towards the Spanish troops and officers presented a circular problem for the International Brigades’ leaders. It was recognised that if Spanish troops felt that they were disrespected and treated like second-class citizens in their own country, they would be less likely to operate effectively alongside foreign troops, resulting in the very symptoms that caused disrespect. Claiming, as Tapsell did in private, that Spanish troops were less motivated and reliable was therefore both politically and militarily unacceptable. Instead, blame was placed on the international volunteers:
There has been a lack of understanding regarding the role of the International Brigades in the development of the Spanish Army, manifesting in a lack of rapport between Spanish and international soldiers. During attacks, for example, there have been cases in which the internationals have advanced and the Spaniards in the same battalions have stayed behind. The responsibility lies with the international comrades, who in many cases have adopted an attitude of contempt towards the Spaniards.Footnote 80
The report concluded that the problem lay in insufficient political work, and could be addressed by mobilising communists to serve as examples in discipline, care of arms, military training and supporting the political work of the commissariat.Footnote 81 This conclusion was often echoed whenever the question of relations between foreigners and Spaniards arose.Footnote 82 This was perhaps the only politically acceptable answer, and offered the attractive prospect that issues could be addressed through positive measures, albeit still reinforcing a teacher/student dynamic in which the success of Spaniards was dependent on the volunteers’ capacity to uplift them.
However, such efforts to shape interactions between Spaniards and foreign volunteers were never fully successful and appear to have been cyclical throughout the International Brigades’ existence. Even in early 1937, articles in the XV Brigade newspapers implicitly acknowledged a troublesome status quo. One piece listed undesirable behaviours so specific there can be little doubt that they were addressing concrete instances:
Always talk about leave, don't carry out orders, argue that anti-fascist officers are incompetent and needlessly send militiamen to their death, spread false rumours like that there are fascists in the popular army headquarters, blame lack of wine on HQ and QM drinking it all . . . unfavourably compare Spanish soldiers with internationals, say that English and French militiamen should return home.Footnote 83
A survey of political commissars in mid-1938 confirms that these same issues were still of concern, requesting ‘the precise state of relations between international and Spanish comrades’, any difficulties they presented and the level of respect for Spanish officers.Footnote 84 Later in the conflict, the looming repatriation of foreign volunteers could also act to sour relations, ‘produc[ing] a very bad feeling among the Spanish comrades’, who were all too aware that the volunteers were eager to leave to their respective countries.Footnote 85 By this point, it had become clear that the hoped-for dynamic between foreign volunteers and their Spanish counterparts had gone badly wrong, as indicated in a letter from American volunteer Paul Wendorf:
The Battalion today has quite a different aspect. There is a minority of Americans who have been through a number of actions, most of them embittered by what has happened to them, and a majority of young Spanish recruits, many of whom have little idea of what the war is about and still less of what they are going up against.Footnote 86
It is noteworthy that similar themes are also present in the declarations made to the Nationalists by Spanish deserters from the International Brigades, one of the few sources that directly preserve the viewpoints of individual Spanish soldiers.Footnote 87 Though hyperbolic, the observations are familiar:
Because of their good military spirit, [the foreigners] are treated better than the Spaniards, they earn the same but are preferred when it comes to clothing or food. Although the Spanish lack such things, they have never lacked for anything . . . Animosity also stemmed from the contempt by which the officers treat the Spaniards, which manifested itself more than once in rude reproaches, telling the Spaniards that if they had had valour from the start, they would not have had to abandon their lives to help proletarians who have been characterised by their cowardice.Footnote 88
These are of course not unmediated or even typical voices, and such declarations were likely shaped by what the defectors believed their interrogators wished to hear. However, given that their themes overlap with the reports of the International Brigades’ own political commissars, they are unlikely to be outright fabrications. While not an even-handed window into the views of all Spanish soldiers in the International Brigades, deserters appeared to use real, if potentially exaggerated, grievances to inform their stories. From them, we can posit that for a minority of Spanish soldiers in the International Brigades, the issues described here led to significant barriers between them and the international volunteers.
Conclusions
Although the problems discussed here were significant and recurring, it is important to avoid blanket categorisations. Attempts to mitigate problems were not always unsuccessful, and some sources, such as censorship reports on Spaniards’ correspondence, indicate that morale was often considered relatively high – in one case concluding that Spanish letters indicated great satisfaction with the international military leaders.Footnote 89 Nonetheless, these reports, while perhaps confirming that such issues never reached a critical level, provide only a very limited and generalised snapshot into the concerns of Spaniards in the International Brigades and should not be taken as contradicting other evidence. Rather, they indicate the reality that context, policy and individual efforts could all make a significant difference toward ameliorating the problems discussed here – yet the recurring and persistent nature of these problems indicates in turn that these were structural problems that could be mitigated rather than permanently solved.
Other factors also worked in the volunteers’ favour. Spanish Republicans could not help but appreciate the considerable personal sacrifices the foreign volunteers were making. From the volunteers’ perspective, relations with their Spanish comrades were shaped by expectations of the conflict in Spain and their role in it. The portrayal of the struggle overseas, which emphasised the bravery, sacrifice and martyrdom of the Spanish people, encouraged prospective volunteers to cast themselves as saviours. While their Spanish comrades appreciated their sacrifices, framing foreign participation in this way could not help but foster resentment at being treated as less knowledgeable or capable. The underlying justification for the International Brigades themselves can be seen as stemming from an assumption that Spaniards made poor soldiers and that internationals, however inexperienced, would do better than the locals. This assumption in turn underpinned individual decisions to fight in Spain, which was an attractive battlefield for prospective volunteers precisely because it offered the chance to make a personal difference that seemed impossible elsewhere.Footnote 90 Friction caused by disrespect between Spaniards and non-Spaniards, fuelled by such assumptions of superiority, needs to be understood as a systemic issue for the International Brigades stemming from their very conception.
While transnational encounters clearly offered scope for positive experiences of interpersonal and institutional solidarity, they also presented a series of fundamental challenges that proved impossible to fully overcome despite significant effort. Differences in motivation for fighting, political cultures, modes of organisation and ideas of what the conflict was about were all inevitable consequences of the ways in which the International Brigades had been conceived, organised and recruited.Footnote 91 Crucially, though the involvement of the Comintern and national Communist Parties lent the International Brigades many distinctive features, these underlying factors were not unique to the Spanish Civil War. Similarly ‘divergent expectations’ between foreign and local fighters have been noted by Nir Arielli in the context of the Israeli War of Independence, and even when foreign units have been more nationally cohesive than the International Brigades, scholarship still highlights the impossibility of fully reconciling differences in doctrine, identity, politics and priorities in transnational and multinational armies.Footnote 92 Rather, the complex relations between the International Brigades and their Spanish hosts reflect the difficulties inherent to organising a transnational or multinational army, and reconciling the needs and expectations of disparate participants.
