Abraham Lincoln Brigade

ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE. In an unprecedented act of international solidarity, 2,800 American volunteers took up arms in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) to defend Spain’s democratically elected Republic against a rebellion led by General Franco with support from Hitler and Mussolini. To the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the defense of the Republic represented the last hope of stopping the international spread of fascism.

The Lincolns fought alongside approximately 35,000 antifascists from fifty countries, who like themselves were organized under the aegis of the Comintern. In keeping with Popular Front culture, the Americans named their units the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the George Washington Battalion, and the John Brown Battery. Together with the British, Irish, Canadian, and other nationals they formed the Fifteenth International Brigade. (The term “Lincoln Brigade” originated with an American support organization, Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade). One hundred twenty-five American men and women also served with the American Medical Bureau to Save Spanish Democracy as nurses, doctors, technicians, and ambulance drivers.

The conviction that made volunteering for a war against fascism possible was born from the economic calamity and political turmoil of the 1930s. Like many during the Great Depression, the volunteers had experienced deprivation and injustice, leading them to join the burgeoning student, unemployed, union, and cultural movements influenced by the Communist Party and other Left organizations. Involvement in these groups exposed them to a Marxist and internationalist perspective and, with their successes in galvanizing people to conscious political action, gave rise to a revolutionary élan.

American radicalism was spurred by the appearance of profascist groups like the Liberty League and by the expansion of fascism abroad. With Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Hitler’s ascendance in 1933, and Italy’s assault on Ethiopia in 1934—all accomplished without hindrance from the governments of the West—the Communist Party responded with the coalition-building strategy of the Popular Front, attracting thousands of aroused citizens directly into its ranks or into “front” organizations. When four right-wing Spanish generals, with German and Italian support, attacked the legally elected government on July 19, 1936, a determination to “make Madrid the tomb of fascism” swept the progressive communities in Europe and the Americas. Within weeks, militant German, French, and Italian antifascists were fighting in Madrid. By January 1937, despite a State Department prohibition against travel to Spain, Americans were crossing the Pyrenees.

The Lincolns came from all regions of the country and diverse class, ethnic and racial backgrounds. They included factory workers, seamen, students, the unemployed, miners, fur workers, lumberjacks, teachers, salesmen, athletes, dancers, and artists. They established the first racially integrated military unit in US history and were the first to be led by an African American commander. At least 60 percent were members of the Young Communist League or the Communist Party. Wobblies, socialists, and the unaffiliated also joined. The Socialists formed their own Debs Column for Spain, but open recruitment brought on government suppression.

The United States and Europe staked a neutral position on the war despite the threat posed by Franco’s forces against a fellow democracy. The West embargoed aid to the Spanish belligerents, ostensibly to de-escalate the war, but selective enforcement fatally undermined the Republic. Nonintervention prevented arms from reaching only the Republic, while Germany and Italy supplied Franco with troops, tanks, submarines, and a modernized air force (among the first to bomb entire cities, most notably Guernica). General Motors, Texaco, and other American corporations clandestinely assisted Franco with trucks and fuel. The Soviet Union and Mexico were alone in selling armaments to the Republic, although the weapons were often impounded at the French border.

Throughout the war, a vociferous political and cultural movement in the United States rallied to the Republic’s cause by raising money for medical aid and demanding an end to the embargo. Such participants as Albert Einstein, Dorothy Parker, Gene Kelly, Paul Robeson, Helen Keller, A. Philip Randolph, and Gypsy Rose Lee reflected the wide base of support for the Republican cause.

Self-motivated and ideological, the Lincolns attempted to create an egalitarian “people’s army”; officers were distinguished only by small bars on their berets and in some cases rank-and-file soldiers elected their own officers. Traditional military protocol was shunned, although not always successfully. A political commissar explained the politics of the war to the volunteers and tended to their needs and morale. The Lincoln Brigade helped ease the pressure on Madrid, giving the Republic time to train and organize its own popular army. Respectful news reports of the Brigade by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Herbert Matthews, Martha Gellhorn, and Lillian Hellman bolstered antifascist opinion in the United States. Yet the Lincolns and the Republican military, fighting with inadequate weaponry, could not withstand the forces allied against them. By the end, the Lincolns had lost nearly an estimated 800 men and sustained a casualty rate higher than that suffered by American soldiers in World War II. In November 1938, as a last attempt to pressure Hitler and Mussolini into repatriating their troops, Prime Minister Juan Negrín ordered the withdrawal of the International Brigades. The Axis coalition refused to follow suit and the Republic fell in March 1939.

The Lincolns returned home as heroes of the antifascist cause but enjoyed no official recognition of their deed. Many Lincolns soon aroused bitterness within sectors of the Left when, with the signing of the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact in 1939, they supported the Communist Party’s call for the United States to stay out of World War II. Once the United States and the Soviet Union entered the war, however, many of the veterans enlisted in the armed forces or served with the merchant marine. In a foreshadowing of the McCarthy period, the armed forces designated the Lincolns as “premature antifascists” and confined them to their bases. Many successfully protested and were allowed to see action. Among the core agents of the Office of Strategic Services were Lincoln veterans whose contacts with the European partisans, forged in Spain, were key to agency missions.

In the 1950s most veterans, whether Communist or not, were harassed or forced out of their jobs by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Communist Lincolns in particular were targeted by the repressive Subversive Activities Control Board, the Smith Act, and state sedition laws, although over time all but a few convictions were overturned. In the 1950s and 1960s the majority of Lincoln veterans quit the Communist Party but continued to be active in antiracist, peace and other social justice movements. In 2007, Spain honored the veterans of the International Brigades by inviting them to apply for Spanish citizenship. The last two surviving Lincoln Brigade veterans passed away in 2016 and 2018, respectively.

Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is typical of the few popular books and movies (e.g. Fallen Sparrow, My Dog Skip) with protagonists modeled on the Lincoln volunteers. These works depict them as heroic individuals yet rarely acknowledge their Left politics nor contextualize them in the collective formation of the Brigade. Mainstream culture and school textbooks continue to ignore their legacy altogether. Notwithstanding these omissions, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade commands attention as a unique example of prescient, courageous and radical action in the cause of international freedom.

Bessie, Alvah. Men in Battle. San Francisco: Chandler and Sharp, 1975.

Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Collum, Danny Duncan, ed. African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: “This Ain’t Ethiopia, but It Will Do.” New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.

Fisher, Harry. Comrades: Tales of a Brigadista in the Spanish Civil War. University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Hochschild, Adam. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

Landis, Arthur, H. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade. New York: Citadel Press, 1967.

Buckner, Noel, Mary Dore, and Sam Sills. The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. 1984. Film Distributed by Kino-Lorber, Inc. New York.

Montell, Judith. Forever Activists: Stories from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. 1990. Film. Clarity Films.

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives: https://alba-valb.org/