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'I Wanted to be a Little Lenin': Ideology and the German International Brigade VolunteersAuthor(s): Josie McLellanSource: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), pp. 287-304Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036387 .

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Journal

f

Contemporaryistory opyright

@

2006 SAGE

ublications,

ondon,

housand

Oaks,

CAand

New

Delhi,

Vol

41(2),

287-304. ISSN 022-0094.

DOI:10.

177/0022009406062069

Josie

McLellan

'IWanted to be a Little Lenin':

Ideology

and

the German

International

Brigade

Volunteers

During

the

Spanish

Civil

War,

about 2800 Germans

igned up

to

fight

in

the

InternationalBrigades.'The BritishstudentJohn Cornfordwrote:'Theyare

the finest

people

in

some

ways

I've ever met.

In

a

way they

have lost

every-

thing,

have been

throughenough

to

break

most

people,

and remain

trong

and

cheerfuland humorous.

If

anything

s

revolutionary

t is these

comrades.'2

As

Cornford

pointed

out,

the Germanswho

converged

on

Spain

in

1936/7 had

hard

times behind hem.

Many

of them had been

mprisoned

n

Germany

fter

the nazi

seizureof

power,

and

subsequently xpelled

from the

country

and

stripped

of their

citizenship.

Othershad fled to

centresof Germananti-fascist

resistance ike

Paris,

Prague

and

Moscow,

hoping

to undermine he

National

The

author would like to thank Daniel

Kowalsky,

Catherine

Merridale,

Leon

Quinn

and

the

JCH's

anonymous

reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this

article.

1 On

the German

volunteers,

see the

early

account

by

Arnold

Krammer,

'Germans

Against

Hitler.

The Thalmann

Brigade

in

the

Spanish

Civil

War',

Journal

of

Contemporary History,

4,

2

(April

1969),

65-83. Patrik von zur

Mihlen's

Spanien

war

ihre

Hoffnung.

Die

deutsche

Linke

im

spanis-

chen

Biirgerkrieg

1936 bis

1939

(Bonn 1983)

is the

only

book-length

study

of the

Germans

in

Spain.

More

recent work has had the

advantage

of access to

communist archives: K.-M.

Mallmann,

"'Kreuzritter

des antifaschistischen

Mysteriums":

Zur

Erfahrungsperspektive

des

Spanischen

Biirgerkrieges'

n

H.

Grebing

and C.

Wickert

(eds),

Das 'andere'

Deutschland

im

Widerstand

gegen

den

Nationalsozialismus.

Beitriige

zur

politischen (Uberwindung

der

nationalsozialistischen

Diktatur

im Exil und im Dritten

Reich

(Essen 1994);

J.

McLellan,

Antifascism

and

Memory

in East

Germany.

Remembering

the International

Brigades

(Oxford 2004),

chap.

1. Michael

Uhl,

drawing

on

German,

Spanish

and Russian

archives,

provides

the

most definitive account of the German vol-

unteers

yet:

M.

Uhl,

'Die Internationalen

Brigaden

im

Spiegel

neuer

Dokumente',

Internationale

Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz

zur

Geschichte

der

Deutschen

Arbeiterbewegung,

35/4

(1999),

486-518;

and

esp.

idem,

Mythos

Spanien.

Das

Erbe

der

internationalen

Brigaden

in der

DDR

(Bonn

2004),

part

one.

Uhl,

probably

for

reasons

of

space,

is

largely

silent on the volunteers' combat moti-

vation. The exact

number

of German volunteers

in

the International

Brigades

is

impossible

to ascer-

tain. Recent research indicates that there

were

significantly

fewer than the

often-quoted figure

of

5000.

R.

Skoutelsky,

L'espoir guidait

leurs

pas.

Les volontaires

frangais

dans les

Brigades

inter-

nationales,

1936-1939

(Paris 1998), 330; Mallmann,

"'Kreuzritter des antifaschistischen

Mysteriums"', op.

cit.,

35.

Uhl,

'Die Internationalen

Brigaden

im

Spiegel

neuer

Dokumente',

op.

cit.,

490. On the Austrian International

Brigade experience

see

Osterreicher

im

Spanischen

Biirgerkrieg.

Interbrigadisten

berichten

iiber

ihre Erlebnisse

1936

bis

1945

(Vienna

1986).

West German veteran

memoirs are collected

in M.

Schafer

(ed.),

Spanien

1936

bis

1939.

Erinnerungen

von

Inter-

brigadisten

aus der

BRD

(Frankfurt

am Main

1976).

2

J.

Cornford to M.

Heinemann,

in

V.

Cunningham

(ed.),

The

Penguin

Book

of Spanish

Civil

War Verse

(Harmondsworth 1996),

128.







288

Journal

f

Contemporary

History

Vol

41

No 2

Socialist

regime

from

without.

A

significant

number were

Jewish.3

All

con-

tinued to

fear

the

long

arm

of

the nazi

security

services

and

many fought

under

assumed

names. After the International

Brigades

were

demobilized

in

the

summer

of

1938,

returning

to

Germany

was

an

impossibility.

The

majority

ended

up

in

internment

camps

in

southern France.

From

here,

a

fortunate

few

managed

to obtain

visas to

a

neutral

country.

The

unlucky

ones were

deported

to

Germany

after

the

occupation

of France and faced

years

in

prison

or concentration

camps.

The soldiers of

the International

Brigades

were neither

professionals

nor

conscripts,

nor

were

they fighting

for

their

country.

Not

only

their status as

volunteers,

but also

their

political homogeneity

was

relatively

unusual.

Although

by

no means the

first

international

army,

the

35,000

volunteers

of

the International

Brigades

have attracted

popular

and

scholarly

attention far

beyond

that which

their

numbers

might appear

to

warrant.4

To

some

commen-

tators,

both at the time and

in

retrospect, they

seemed to

embody

the

impulse

to

fight oppression

and

dictatorship.

To

others,

they

were a 'Comintern

army'

of

ideologically

blinkered

communists,

there to

do

the

bidding

of the

Soviet

Union.5

Both

interpretations

are

oversimplified,

and neither does

much to

illu-

minate the

often

complex

motivations

of those who volunteered.

A

study

of

combat motivation

in

the International

Brigades

as a whole would be

a

vast

project

which cannot

be

attempted

here. Nor does this article

allow

space

for a

meaningful comparison

between national

groups.

Instead,

it will focus

on

the

German

volunteers,

a

fascinating

case

study

not

only

of

International

Brigade

soldiers,

but of the

role

played by ideology

in

combat motivation.

How

do

soldiers

whose

primary

motivation is

ideological

differ from those

who are

fighting

for

money,

for their

country,

or

for

self-preservation?

This article

examines

what

drove

them

to

volunteer

for a war

in

Spain,

and

examines

how

their combat

motivation

changed

over

time.

Whatever

role

ideology played

in

the

decision to

volunteer,

political

commitment alone was not

enough

to

pre-

pare

men for combat

and

keep

them

in

battle when the

going got tough.

And,

of course, factors which

inspired

men to volunteer, or motivated them

during

3 Arno

Lustiger

estimates

their number

to

have been

around 500.

A.

Lustiger,

'German

and

Austrian

Jews

in

the International

Brigade

[sic]',

Leo Baeck Institute Year Book

XXXV

(1990),

301.

Cf. A.

Lustiger,

Schalom Libertad

Juden

im

spanischen

Biirgerkrieg

(Berlin

2001),

64.

4

On the International

Brigades

as a

whole,

see K.

Bradley

and M.

Chappell,

International

Brigades

in

Spain

1936-39

(London 1994);

S.

Alvarez,

Historia

politica y

militar

de

las

Brigadas

Internacionales

(Madrid

1996);

M.

Jackson,

Fallen

Sparrows (Philadelphia,

PA

1994);

R.D.

Richardson,

Comintern

Army.

The

International

Brigades

and the

Spanish

Civil War

(Lexington,

KY

1982);

V.

Brome,

The International

Brigades. Spain

1936-1937

(London 1967).

A

number of

excellent

recent studies

of

national

groups

have made use

of

Moscow archives to

great

effect:

J.K.

Hopkins,

Into the

Heart

of

the Fire. The British

in

the

Spanish

Civil War

(Stanford,

CA

1998);

P.

Carroll,

The

Odyssey

of

the

Abraham

Lincoln

Brigade

(Stanford,

CA

1994);

R.

Baxell,

British

Volunteers

in the

Spanish

Civil

War

(London 2004).

On the

historiography

and

reception

of

the

Brigades

see R.

Stradling,

History

and

Legend.

Writing

the

International

Brigades

(Cardiff

2003);

P.

Monteath,

Writing

the

Good

Fight.

Political Commitment

in

the

International Literature

of

the

Spanish

Civil

War

(Westport,

CT

1994).

5

Richardson,

op.

cit.







McLellan:

I

Wanted

o

be

a

Little enin'

289

the

early

phase

of the

war,

could

change

as the

war

wore on and the

euphoria

of

arrival

faded.

In

many

ways,

the

experiences

of

the German volunteers

resembled hoseof other

twentieth-century

oldiers:

old, fear,

hunger

and

pain

on the one

hand,

esprit

de

corps

and a senseof

professional

pride

on theother.

This

article

askswhat difference

deology

made.

For

all

the fervent nternationalism

f

the

Republican

war

effort,

in

retro-

spect

the

history

of

the German

volunteers

appears

now more

closely

wedded

to events

in

Germany

han

the broader

weep

of

Spanish

history.

As we shall

see,

the

volunteers'

motivation

stemmed

n

large part

from

events

at

home.

Once

they

reached

Spain,

the

structure

of the

Republican

army

and

linguistic

limitations meant

that their

contact

with

Spaniards

was

limited,

and their

grasp

of

Spanish

politics

even

more so. For

many,

their

political goals

in

Germany

remainedmuch more

tangible

than

vague

conceptions

of

Popular

Front

victory

n

Spain.

Equally,

when

it

comes

to the

sourcesavailable o the

historianof this

topic,

the

most

enduring

races

of the

volunteers'

xperiences

are

to be found

in

German

archives.

Very

few

contemporary

ources,

such as

letters,

have

survived.

Many

of the soldiers

were unable

or

unwilling

o con-

tact their

families

n

Germany.

Letterssent

to friends and

relatives

n

exile

frequently

went

missing

n

the

war

years.

Likewise,

soldierswho

kept

diaries

often lost them

in

the chaos

that followed demobilization.6

he

Brigade

press

and

publications

were

heavily

censored

and

tend to

reflect

he

party

ine

fairly

assiduously.

The International

Brigade

archivesin Moscow are invaluable

sources for the

military

history

of the

conflict,

but

inevitably,

he

histories

of

individualsoldiers tend

to

be

eclipsed

by

the

broader

sweep

of

military

administration nd

discipline.

After German

capitulation

n

1945,

the

majority

of

the

surviving

veterans

settled

in

East

Germany.7

Most of them were

communists,

and

either emo-

tional

ties or

party

discipline

drew them to

the

new

socialist state.

After the

West German

Communist

Party

was banned

in

1956,

many

West German

veteranswere ordered

by

the

party

to 'retreat' o the

East. The East German

state liked to

present

itself as the 'better

Germany',representative

f the

progressive,

anti-fascist

German

radition,

and the

Spanish

Civil War was an

important

part

of this

legitimizing

actic.

The International

Brigades

were

often

portrayed

as the

vanguard

of communist anti-fascism

and the fore-

runnersof

the East

German

armed orces.

This

official

version

of events

had

an

impact

on individual

memories

oo. Even veterans

who had travelled o

Spain

as

non-communists

ften filteredtheir

experiences hrough

the

lens

of

6

A few

diaries

or

diary fragments

did survive

in

the

archives,

most

notably

those of the writer

Bodo Uhse. Uhse's diaries were

held

by

the

East

German

Academy

of

Arts

and a

lightly

censored

version

was

published

in the 1980s.

The

use of diaries

published

post-1945

is

fraught

with diffi-

culty.

See

J.

McLellan,

'The

Politics

of Communist

Biography.

Alfred

Kantorowicz and the

Spanish

Civil

War',

German

History,

22,

4

(2004),

536-62 on

the

changes

made to one

diary

in

the

postwar

period.

7 See

McLellan,

Antifascism

and

Memory,

op.

cit.,

for more

on

the veterans' situation

in

East

Germany.







290

Journal

f

Contemporary

History

Vol

41

No

2

later

political

commitments. One

man,

describing

the

battle of Teruel

to

me,

said

'we were ten comrades

altogether',

before

catching

himself and

adding,

'I

say

comrade,

although

in

those

days

I

wasn't a

comrade

yet.'8

Published

accounts

of the war were

often aimed

at a

youthful

readership,

with the

hope

that the

young

would be

inspired

to make similar

sacrifices

for the socialist

cause.

Writers were

encouraged

to

emphasize

the

political

over the

personal

or

everyday.

And,

of

course,

histories of the war and

collections of

memoirs were

often

heavily

censored to

fit the official

line on the war.

Given these

limited

sources,

and their

partial, retrospective

nature,

how can

the

historian

hope

to

reconstruct

the motivation of

those

who

joined

the

Brigades?

It

goes

almost without

saying

that no

body

of

sources is without its

limitations,

and that

even

unlimited access to

contemporary

letters and

diaries

does not

open

a

window

onto

the

soldier's mind. As

experience

is related

-

whether

five minutes or

five decades after the event

-

it

is

inevitably

overlaid

with

hindsight,

nostalgia,

wishful

thinking,

bravado or

bashfulness.

All

social

historians of war must be

alive to the narrative structures used

by

soldiers to

make

sense of what

they

have done and

seen.

In

the

case of sources available

for this

study,

the

narrative

overlay

is often

a

thickly

ideological

one. But even

the East

German

archives

preserved fragments

of more

personal

memories,

which

offer a

glimpse

into

the

motivations

of individual

soldiers.

For

all their zeal

in

implementing

the official line on

the

war,

the East

German censors

kept

painstaking

records of their

cuts,

which can

be

used to

reconstruct individual veterans' stories. Letters

exchanged

between veterans

reveal

an irreverent

perspective

on

the

war,

far from

the formulaic heroism of

official

histories.

Equally,

veteran memoirs collected

by

East

German

archivists were often much franker than

published

accounts. Veterans

proved

particularly prone

to

depart

from the

party

line

during

interviews,

perhaps

because

it is easier to

escape

from the

stylistic

conventions of official histories

while

speaking

than

while

writing.

Those interviewed

by

party

historians often

used the licence

of old

age

to wander

wilfully

off

topic

and

pursue

their

own

agendas,

in the

knowledge

that the interview would be transcribed and

archived for

posterity.'

Even those who did not have

access to

such

official

repositories

worked

to

preserve

their memories. One

veteran,

who

had been

imprisoned

after a

Stalinist show trial

in

1957,

wrote a

lengthy

memoir cover-

ing

his time both

in

the

International

Brigades

and

in

prison.

With

absolutely

no

prospect

of

publication,

and

given

that his

family

was

under constant secret

police

surveillance,

this

was a

risky activity.

There

would have been

severe

repercussions

had the

manuscript

been discovered. His

wife

typed

three

copies

and

gave

one each to their

daughter

and

son,

spreading

the burden of

conceal-

ing

the manuscript." None of the

copies

was ever discovered and his memoirs

were

published

in full in

1991,

after the

fall of the Berlin

Wall."11

8

Interview

with Alfred

Katzenstein,

5

February

1999.

9 Cf.

McLellan, Antifascism

and

Memory, op.

cit.,

98-9.

10 Interview with Charlotte

Janka,

11

April

2000.

11 W.

Janka,

Spuren

eines

Lebens

(Hamburg

1991).







McLellan:

Wanted

o be

a

LittleLenin' 29

I1

The

collapse

of communismalso

played

an

important

ole

in

the

interviews

carriedout for

this

project

n

the

late 1990s. All the veterans interviewed

had

been

membersof the

East

German

Communist

Party.

The

end

of

the

East

Germanstate affected

their narratives

of

Spain

in

different

ways.

A few

had

started

to

reassess he

period

and flesh

out their own

experiences

with

newly

available nformation

on anarchistand

Trotskyistgroups.

Others

clung

even

more

tightly

to

the

certainties

of

party dogma.

Both

groups,

however,

pre-

ferred

talking

about the

war to

talking

about what

happened

afterwards.

Despite

the failuresof

state

socialism,

many

felt that

Spain

held

the

key

to

today's political

questions,

and

contrasted

heir

political

commitment

with the

lack of

interest

of

their

grandchildren's eneration.

Their

nostalgia

for

Spain

was

partly political,

but

it

also

contained

wistfulness

for the

adventureand

romanceof

their

youth.

This article

ollows

the volunteers

rom their

decision

to

volunteer,

hrough

their

arrival

n

Spain,

heirfirst

exposure

o combatand

the

experience

f

pro-

longed

mobilization.Volunteers'

perceptions

of what

they

were

fighting

for

changed

radically

as

they experienced

Spain

at first hand and as

they

entered

combat. The

decision

to

volunteerwas

not identicalwith

the motivation

to

fight.

Nor can

any

soldierbe said

to have

fought

for one reasonalone

-

what

kept

men

in

battlewas

complex

and shiftedover time. For

some

men,

an

ini-

tially

abstract

commitment

o anti-fascism

may

have evolved into

loyalty

to

their fellow

soldiers.

In

other

cases,

lust

for

adventureand action

may

have

been

complementedby

a

growing political

awareness.What follows is an

attempt

to

separate

out the strands

of

combat

motivation,

and examine the

ways

in

which

they

interactedand

overlapped.

The most

commonly

voiced

hope

amongst

those

travelling

o

Spain

was

for

the defeat of

fascism. German

anti-fascists

were keen to

defend the

Spanish

Popular

Front,

but

they

were

also

quick

to

see the

connectionwith

their own

political

predicament.

While the volunteerscondemned

Franco's

regime

as

dangerous

and

illegitimate,

but

the situation

n

Germany

was

rarely

far from

their minds

either.

By

1936 it

looked

as

if

Hitler's

dictatorship

was

there to

stay. Opportunities

or

political

action within

Germany

were

very

limited

indeed,

but

striking

a

blow

against Spanish

fascism

could,

the volunteers

hoped,

mark he

beginning

of

the end for

German ascism

oo.

And,

of

course,

the

involvement f the Condor

Legion

strengthened

heir

conviction

hat,

once

Madrid

fell,

Berlinwould soon

follow. The civil

war was both

a

displaced

fight against

Hitlerand

a

chance

o strikea blow

against

nternational

ascism.

As 'The Ballad of

the

Eleventh

Brigade' put

it:

And even if we

have to

fight

For seven more

years,

Every

war's

over sometime.

We're

going

to see

Germany again

Then we'll march in the

gates,







292

Journal

f

Contemporary

istory

ol

41 No 2

With a

cry

of

'Pasaremos'.

We'llchuckwhatever's

eft of the

swastika

Into old Father

Rhine.12

Hew Strachanwrites:

'Men need to be hardened

n

peace

if

they

are to

be

tough enough

for

war.'13

Despite

their

lack

of formal

militarytraining,

the

German volunteers

had been

toughened by

their

experiences

since the nazi

seizure

of

power.

Those who had suffered

police

or concentration

camp

imprisonment

n

Germany

had first-hand

experience

of the brutal nature of

the

regime

and the

isolated

position

of Germananti-fascists.As one veteran

put

it:

'...

most of the

political

emigrants

had

already

done time

in

Germany.

They

had been

imprisoned,

beaten.

It

[Spain]

was an

opportunity

o face

the

naziswith a gun in your hand. That playeda hugerole.'14Againand again,

veteranscited the

opportunity

o

fight

'with a

gun

in

your

hand' as a central

part

of the war's

appeal.

For

people

who had felt

powerless

since

1933,

this

was a chance to face their

enemy

on

equal

terms.

Although

the

communist

movement

had

recently

hrown its

weight

behind

attempts

o

form a German

Popular

Front,

many

saw the

International

Brigades

as

part

of a militant

socialist

tradition.Anotherveteran

recounted:

What

I had dreamtas a

child,

when

my

father old me storiesabout he

struggle

of the work-

ing

class for

a decent existence

-

Spartacus,

Berlin,

Leuna

on

the

Ruhr,

the victorious Soviet

army

-

wasn't a dream

any

more,

it had become

reality.

I

was a soldierof the

working

class."

Another

remembered

comrade

saying:

'I

wanted

to be a little

Lenin'.16

A

large

majority

of the

volunteers,

probably

about 70

per

cent,

were communist

or

sympathetic

o the Communist

Party.17

ike the International

Brigades

as

a

whole,

the German

volunteers were an

unusually politically

homogeneous

group

of soldiers.

Some came

from the Soviet

Union,

others had been

politi-

cally

active

in

Frenchor

Czechoslovakian xile. Once the

international om-

munist movementgavenationalpartiesthe go-aheadto startsendingmen to

Spain,many

felt it was

their

duty

as communists

o volunteer or the

Brigades.

Nevertheless,

political

convictionwas not the

only

motivation or

fighting.

12

Ernst

Busch,

Lieder der

Arbeiterklasse

& Lieder aus dem

spanischen

Buirgerkrieg

(CD)

(Dortmund n.d.).

13 See Hew Strachan's

article

in

this issue

on

training

and combat motivation.

14

Interviewwith Roman

Rubinstein,

January

1999.

15

Stiftung

Archiv der

Parteien und

Massenorganisationen

der

DDR im

Bundesarchiv

(hence-

forth

SAPMO-BArch), SgY 11/V237/13/206,

85.

ErlebnisberichtWilly Grunert,

22

May

1968.

Leuna is a reference

to the BASF

chemical

works,

the site of

conflict between workers and

state

security

forces

in March

1921,

leading

to the deaths of

145 and the arrest

of over

34,000.

See E.

Weitz,

Creating

German Communism 1890-1990

(Princeton,

NJ

1997),

106. As Leuna lies on the

Saale,

I

assume that

the reference to the Ruhr

is the result of the author's

conflation of Weimar-era

communist

militancy.

16

SAPMO-BArch,

DY 55 V

241/113,

76.

Report by

Hans Schubert.

17

Uhl,

Mythos Spanien, op.

cit.,

58.







McLellan:

Wantedo

be a Little enin' 293

For

some

volunteers,

being

on

the

spot

was an

important

factor.

A

number of

Germans who

were

in

Spain

when

the

war

broke

out,

either as

emigr6s

or

as

participants

in

the

Workers'

Olympiad,

planned

as an alternative to the

Berlin

Olympics

in

Barcelona

in

summer

1936,

were

amongst

the first volunteers

to

fight

for

the

Spanish

Republic, pre-dating

the International

Brigades

by

a

number of

months."'

Clearly, ideology played

a

role,

but there was also an

element of

impulse

and

opportunity.

Germans

in

exile elsewhere saw

Spain

as

a chance to

escape

from the

boredom,

loneliness

and

poverty

of

their

uprooted

lives. German

emigres

were often cut off from their

professional

lives and net-

works of

friends and

family.

Unable

to

speak

the

language

and

living

on the

breadline,

their

opportunities

for

meaningful political

work

were limited.

One

man

I

interviewed,

recalling

his time

in

exile

in

Prague,

felt that his

political

work there was

trivial,

'too

conventional,

too

small'.19

Veteran memoirs often

convey

a real sense of adventure and excitement

-

finally

it was

possible

to

use

one's

initiative and

do

something significant.20

Given

that few

of

those

Germans

who

fought

in

the International

Brigades experienced anything

approaching

a normal civilian

life

until 1945 at the

earliest,

it

is

unsurprising

that

they

remember

life

in

the International

Brigades

as a short window of

freedom. For

those

in

their late teens

or

early

to mid-twenties when

they

travelled to

Spain,

it was their

only opportunity

to

experience anything

approaching

the

autonomy

of

young

adulthood,

for all the

restrictions

of

army

discipline.

For

others,

the International

Brigades

offered

an

escape

from

communist

infighting.

The

novelist

Gustav

Regler

saw the war as a

liberation from the

claustrophobic

atmosphere

of Moscow at the time

of

the show trials.

'In

Spain,

I

felt sure of

it,

I

would

breathe

a

different air.

There,

death

was a

pro-

tection

against treachery

and

judges;

one died

at

the

hands of the

enemy.

How

good

it was to think of

death '21

To

Regler,

Spain represented

a

second

chance

for

communism,

an

opportunity

to

cast

off

the shackles of Stalinism and

fight

and

possibly

die for a

worthy

cause.

He

wrote

this, however,

after his break

with the communist movement

following

the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Like

another

later ex-communist Alfred

Kantorowicz,

he

tended to recast

his

decision to

go

to

Spain

in

retrospect,

as a

defence

of

'good'

communism

against

'bad'

Stalinism.

In

a

passage

written

in

1959,

two

years

after

his defection

from

East

Germany,

Kantorowicz wrote

of

Spain:

'Some of

us

fled from the

desper-

ate

doubts,

which

gave

us

headaches

and

homesickness,

fled to the

front,

where,

in

the face of the

enemy

who

lay

before

us,

we

could

forget

our inner

18

E.g.

G.

Wohlrath,

'Als

Arbeitersportler

zur

Volksolympiade

nach

Barcelona'

in

H. Maassen

(ed.), Brigade

International ist

unser

Ehrennahme.

Erlebnisse

ehemaliger deutscher Spanien-

kiimpfer,

2

vols

(3rd

edn,

Berlin

1983),

44-7.

19 Interview with

Max

Kahane,

22

February

1999.

20

One social

democrat volunteer claimed that

he and

a

Spanish

comrade

had

disguised

them-

selves

as

peasants

and worked their

way along

the Mediterranean

coast,

blowing up bridges

as

they

went to halt the

Nationalist

advance.

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

20/1706,

13.

Erinnerungen

Alfred

Berger.

21 G.

Regler,

The

Owl

of

Minerva

(London 1959),

266.







294

Journal

f

Contemporaryistory

ol

41

No

2

desperation

and

get

things straight

with

ourselves

again.'22Regler

and

Kantorowicz

elt

that the war offered an identifiable

enemy

and a chance to

reclaim

the

tarnished

deology

of

communism

by risking

one's

life.

But

in

Kantorowicz's ase at

least,

this

was not the

only

motivation or

travelling

o

Spain.

His diaries

dating

from

this

period

describehis desire

to

overcomehis

middle-class,

bookish

background

and

slight bespectacledappearance

and

prove

himself

n

combat

-

as

a communist

and

as a man.

'I

must be

there

at

the

front',

he

wrote.23

Whatever

Regler

and

Kantorowicz'smotives

for

volun-

teering,

what

is

interesting

s the fact that neither

of

them renouncedhis deci-

sion to

go

to

Spain

after

his

breakwith the

party

-

both remainedadamant

that it had been the

rightthing

to do.

In

retrospect,

however,

heir breakwith

communism

may

have

put

a

slightly

different ast

on

events.

Kantorowicz er-

tainly

went

out of his

way

to

give

the

impression

hat he had been an

ordinary

foot

soldier,

rather

han admit his

membership

f the

functionary

aste.24

Unlike

soldiers

who were

uprooted

from their homes to

join

the

army,

the

Germanvolunteers

generally

remembered heir first weeks

in

the

Brigades

as

a

positive experience

rather than an

unpleasant

shock.

Sometimes

being

a

soldier,

for all its

dangers

and

privations,

could be

preferable

o the alterna-

tives. For those who travelled o

Spain

out of a sense of

political

conviction,

their immediate

experiencesupon

arrival tended to reinforcetheir sense of

purpose.

Men who had been involved

in

underground, llegal political

work

relished

being

able to

'fight

with an

open

visor'.25

One veteran recalled his

metamorphosis

rom

'an

illegal'

to 'a

person again,

a comrade'.

Fighting

n

Spain

brought

its

own

dangers,

but

it

was

preferable

on

every

level to the

isolation and

paranoia

of

the

underground,

which forced its members

to

be

'secretiveand aloof'.26

But even once

the volunteersreached

Spain, primarygroups

could be slow

to

form.

One

man noted how

easily

the Frenchand Britishvolunteersmixed

with one

another,

whilethe Germans emained

quiet,

reserved ndmistrustful.

'The

suspicion

hat

somebody

could be a nazi

spy

hung

n

the

air.'27

or

many,

the

turningpoint

was

when

they

first held a

gun.

Fritz

Rettmann,

who

acted

as a

political

commissar

n

Spain,

remembered

a

dramatic

mprovement

n

morale when

weapons

arrived:

he

petty quarrels

and

poor

discipline

which

had characterized

he

waiting period disappeared.28

ne

soldier

wrote

to

his

22 A.

Kantorowicz,

Deutsches

Tagebuch.

Erster Teil

(Berlin 1980),

49.

23

A.

Kantorowicz,

Nachtbiicher.

Aufzeichnungen

im

franzbsischen

Exil

(Hamburg

1995),

184.

24

See

McLellan,

'The Politics

of

Communist

Biography',

op.

cit.,

547.

25 E.

Gliickauf,

Begegnung

und

Signale:

Erinnerungen

eines Revolutioniirs

(Berlin 1976),

292;

G.

Szinda,

'Behiutet

von

guten

Christen',

Wochenpost,

53

(1986),

19.

26

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1244/2,

126.

Erinnerungen

Karl

Mewis.

27

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1821/2,

283-4.

Erinnerungen

Rudolf

Engel.

28

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

11/V237/23/204,

F.

Rettmann,

'Erlebnisse als

Polit.-Kom.

der

II.

Komp.

des

Edgar-Andre-Battl.',

16.







McLellan:

Wanted

o be

a

Little

enin'

295

wife

shortly

before

his

death

in

December

1936: 'How well

I

felt,

when

I

had

the shooter

in

my

hand

for the

first time ...

I

had missed

feeling

so

healthy.

Life has

such a

deep meaning

here.'29

Many

volunteers

haredhis

feeling

that

Spain

returned

meaning

and order to their

lives;

it was now

possible

to see

their

defeat

in

Germany

as

one lost battle n a much

longer

war. Not

only

did

arrival

n

Spaingive

the volunteers

a new sense of

purpose,

t also seemedto

counteract the

physical

and

mental scars of nazi

brutality.

Weapons, army

training,

and the homosocial

bonds

of

army

life restored

soldiers' sense

of

masculinity,

and left them

feelingphysically

ransformed.As one account

put

it: 'You

couldn't

see the

years

in

prisons

and concentration

amps

any

more.

Joy

and the confidenceof

victory

were writtenon their

faces.'3o

Key

to

the

soldiers'sense of

pride

and confidence

n

their

abilities

was the

enthusiasticwelcomeof the

Spanishpeople.

From

heir

reception

n

Madrid

n

1936 to their farewell

parade

in

Barcelona

n

October

1938,

the

volunteers

sensed

that

they

had the

full

support

of the local

population.

Veterans emem-

bered

feeling

'as

if

we

were

at

home,

with

friends,

with

comrades',31

s local

farmers

pushedoranges,

breadand wine onto the train

which

was

taking

the

soldiers to the front.32This often led to

a

lasting

emotional attachment o

Spain,

and a sense that it had become their new Heimat or homeland. For

Germancommunistsembittered

by

the defeat of

1933,

this kind

of

popular

enthusiasm

ormeda

poignant

contrast o the indifference nd

betrayal

of

the

Germanmasses. The

people

of

Madridare

heroes,

not

us',

wrote one soldier

to

a friend

back

home

in

the

Sudetenland.33

hile

many

of

the volunteers

may

have felt

a

strong

abstract ommitment o the

SpanishRepublic

at the moment

of

volunteering,

his becamemuch more

tangible,

emotional and concreteas

they

came into contactwith the

Spanish

people.

The

fact that such contactwas

necessarily

imited

by

the lack

of a common

language

and the efforts of the

Brigade eadership

o

keep

their soldiers unawareof

the

complexities

of the

political

situationmeantthat the volunteersoften

came

away

with

an

idealized

view of

the

country

for which

they

were

fighting.

It

was easier to love a

fuzzily-defined,

omanticized

Spain

than the

Germany

hey

had left behind.34

Many

volunteers

nded

up

feeling

as

if

they

were

fighting

for

two

causes,

but

must have found it difficult o avoid the

conclusion

that

Spain

was

altogether

the

more

straightforward

f the two. The

song

'Forwards,

International

29

SAPMO-BArch,

NY

4316/19,

99.

30

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

11/V237/13/207,

K.

Hofer,

F.

Baumgirten,

W.

Kinzel,

'Feuertaufe

an

der

Jarama-Front',

52.

31

SAPMO-BArch, SgY 30/1411,

5.

Erinnerungen

Ewald Munschke.

32

F.

Miuller,

Da

kamen

sie

aus

aller

Welt, m/s, n.d.,

no

pagination.

33

SAPMO-BArch,

DY

55/V241/113,

85.

34

See,

for

example,

Erich

Arendt's

Spanish

Civil

War-inspired poetry, Bergwindballade.

Gedichte

des

spanischen

Freibeitskampfes

(Berlin 1952);

Eduard Claudius' Grune Oliven und

nackte

Bergen

(Berlin 1952)

and Hans Maassen's Die Messe des Barcelo

(Halle

1956).

Willi

Bredel's

Begegnung

am Ebro

(Paris

1939)

gives

a

less

rosy picture

of

relations between the

Spanish

and the International

Volunteers.







296

Journal

f

ContemporaryHistory

Vol

41

No 2

Brigades',

one

of the most

famous

of

the

war,

encapsulated

this

bittersweet

outlook:

Born in the far-away fatherland,

We

brought nothing

with us but

the

hate

in

our

hearts.

But we

haven't

forgotten

our homeland

Today

our homeland's

in

front of

Madrid.35

In

a

sense, however,

fighting

in

Spain

allowed

the

volunteers to rediscover

their

pride

in

being

German.

One volunteer noted

that in

the

early days

of the

war,

'there

were

very

few who

declared themselves

to be

"German",

they

were

Bavarians,

Rheinlanders,

Upper

Silesians or

Saxons.'36

But

membership

of

a

German

company

or

battalion,

and the

approval

of

both the

Spanish popula-

tion and international

observers,

gave

the men the

confidence

openly

to

declare their

nationality.

One volunteer wrote

to

his

girlfriend:

'A

comrade

has

written

"Germany" very beautifully

in

front

of the

tents of

the

German

section.

(The

real

Germany

is

here.)'37

The

volunteers were able

to

feel

that

they

were

rebuilding

a

'good'

national

identity

in

the

eyes

of the

world,

keep-

ing

alive the traditions of the 'true'

Germany,

which

had been obscured

by

nazism.3

For

those who

had

been committed communists before their arrival

in

Spain,

the

war

was

in

many

ways

a

reinforcement

of

their

political

identity,

which had been weakened and undermined

by

the

experiences

of 1933 and

after.

Arrival

in

the International

Brigades

was

an

opportunity

to reclaim

the

verve and

dynamism

of

political

action and

turn German

communism into a

success

story

once

again.

For

German

communists,

the

party provided

the

only

point

of

permanence

during

their

years

of

exile.

Like

soldiers

everywhere,

the

German volunteers

longed

to return home. But

they

could not while the

nazis

remained

in

power.

The

party provided

networks

of

support

for exiled com-

munists,

and for those who ended

up

in

German concentration

camps

it was

often

the clandestine

party

networks within the

camps

which

enabled them to

survive until the end of the second world war. It is therefore

unsurprising

that,

for communist

volunteers,

their

political identity

was

central to the

way they

experienced

and remembered the

war.

Those

who

were not communists at the

time,

but

joined

the

party

later,

tended

to

remember

Spain

in

terms

of

political enlightenment

or revelation.

Their time

in

the

Brigades

often

appears

as a crucial

phase

in

the

emergence

of

35

Erich

Weinert,

Cameradas.

Ein

Spanienbuch

(Berlin 1956),

23.

36

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1821/2,

283-4.

Erinnerungen

Rudolf

Engel.

37

A.

Katzenstein,

Einblicke, Berichte, Bilder,

Briefe,

3

vols,

ms

(Berlin 1995), ii,

79.

38

See,

for

example,

Ernest

Hemingway's description

of

the

volunteers

as

'true,

worthy

Germans. Germans as

we

love

them.'

E.

Hemingway,

'An das

wirkliche

Deutschland'

in

Pasaremos.

Deutsche

Antifaschisten

im

national-revolutioniiren

Krieg

des

spanischen

Volkes

(2nd

edn,

Berlin

1970),

276. The idea of

the

German

volunteers as

representative

of

the

'good

Germany'

was central to the war's

commemoration

in

East

Germany.

See

McLellan,

Antifascism

and

Memory, op.

cit.,

80-1.







McLellan:

I

Wantedo be a Little enin'

297

their

communist

dentity.

One veteran

wrote how

he was

'filledwith

pride'

to

'be

allowed

to

help'

as

an International

Brigades

volunteer.

'I

have

never

forgotten

the trust the

partygave me.'39

For

him,

political

action was some-

thing

inextricably

inked

to the communist

movement,

participation

some-

thing

which

could

only

be

granted

by

the

party.

Indeed,

the

International

Brigades

were a

politicized

army

on

any

terms.

Every

unit,

from

brigade

down

to

platoon,

had

its own

political

commissar

who was also

responsible

or

the

content of front

newspapers

and

any brigadepublications.40

eports

written

after the war on the German

volunteersassessedthem

on

both

military

and

political

criteria.41

t was not unusual

for a

volunteer

to

be describedas a

'braveand

disciplined

oldier'but

'politicallyprimitive,

not

active,

not

always

comradely'.42

olitical

nstruction

ook

place

on a

voluntary

basis,

but it

is

fair

to

say

that the

daily

life of the

brigades

was

relatively deologically

aturated.

Perhaps

he most

striking

ndication

of

the effect this

may

have had

on

the

volunteers

s their

attitude

owardsother

politicalgroups

on the Left.

Reading

veteran

memoirs,

one can

only

conclude

that the divisions

among

the soldiers

of

the Left

were

greater

han

those

between

opposing

armies.Anarchistsand

Trotskyistsappear

in

veteran memoirs

as,

at

best,

undisciplined,

unreliable

soldiers,

and

at

worst,

traitors

to the

SpanishRepublic.

Many

communists

were

convinced

hat anarchists nd

other

non-communists

were

being

used

by

enemy intelligence

o infiltrate he ranks. The

danger

of

enemy agents

was a

common

preoccupation

n

Spain,

reflectedin the line in the

Song

of the

International

Brigades,

No

mercy

to the

dog

who

betrays

us '.43

he

willing-

ness

of the volunteers

actively

to

persecute

other Leftists

should also not be

underestimated:

numberof German

soldiers transferred

o

the

Republican

militarypolice

and were involved

with the

interrogation

f

politically suspect'

prisoners."

But

this

animosity

was not founded

purely

on

ideological

differ-

ences. Dislike or hatred

of anarchists

and

Trotskyists

was often

coupled

with

the belief that their

military rresponsibility

was

responsible

or International

Brigade

osses. It was claimedthat

anarchist oldiersdeserted

at the

prospect

of

combat,41

nd in one case

they

were said to have surrendered

erritory

'soaked

with

the

blood

of our

comrades',

which had cost

the Internationals

0

dead and

200

wounded.46

his

impressionmay

well

have

been one

encouraged

by

the

Brigades'political

leadership.

Soldiers who

had

only

rudimentary

39

SAPMO-BArch,

DY

55/SgY

11/V

237/12/190,

141.

F.

Mergen,

'Mein

Weg

als

Parteiloser

nach

Spanien',

28

November

1964.

40

Uhl,

Mythos

Spanien,

op.

cit.,

41.

41 For more on

these

reports

see

Uhl,

Mythos Spanien, op.

cit.,

76-95;

M. Uhl

and

P.

Huber,

'Politische

Oberwachung

und

Repressionen

in

den

Internationalen

Brigaden

(1936-1938)',

Forum

fiir osteuropiiische

Ideen- und

Zeitgeschichte,

5/2

(2001),

121-59.

42

SAPMO-BArch,

RY

1/I

2/3/86,

124.

43 E.

Weinert,

op.

cit.,

23.

44

McLellan,

Antifascism

and

Memory, op.

cit.,

180-1.

45

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

11/V237/12/190,

259.

(Kurt

Vogel.)

46

SAPMO-BArch,

Sgy

30/1411,

20.

Erinnerungen

Ewald Munschke.







298

Joumal

of

ContemporaryHistory

Vol

41

No 2

Spanish,

and access

only

to

Brigadenewspapers,

had littlechoice but to

accept

what information

hey

were

given.

No amount of

ideological

fervourcould

prepare

volunteers or

the

reality

of

battle. The first

experience

of combat

could seem like a form

of

sensory

assault.

Alfred Katzenstein

remembered he 'terriblecries'

during

his first

attack and the

stomach-turning

mell of dead

mules,

rapidly

bloating

and

decomposing

under

he summer

un.47

He

wrote to his

girlfriend:

Well,

I've

got

my baptism

of fire under

my

belt. It's not a

very

nice

feeling

to hear bullets

whistling

around

you....

It's

so

easy

to

forget,

because it's

simply incomprehensible,

that the

aim of this whole thing is simply to turn people, young people, who love life, who are full of

hope,

into cold

stinking bloody corpses.

Katzenstein

dmitted

hat,

in

the

heat of

battle,

he had

questioned

his decision

to

come to

Spain,

but

hoped

now

to have

put

this

'egocentric

weakness'

behind

him.48

An

anonymous

account

of the

battle of

Jarama

recalled the

'murderous

ire' of Nationalist

tanks,

comrades

'crying

out

left

and

right',

'bullets

whistling

from all

sides'.

When the

remainsof the writer's

company

reached

safety,

they

could not

believe that the retreathad

only

taken a few

minutes. It seemed o us as if the infernohadlastedforhours.'49

Accounts

of

the excitement or rush of

combat

are much

harder to

find,

possibly

due

to

the veterans'

unwillingness

o

be seen to

glorify

war. One man

described his

company's

attack

as an 'avalancheof

fire',

adding

'a

frenzy

gripped

us all'.o0

But such moments of

euphoria

are rare

in

veteranmemoirs:

far more common is a sense

of

shambolic

panic.

One man describedhow dis-

orientated

volunteers,

newly

arrived

n

Spain

and

immediately

dispatched

o

the Madrid

front,

were thrown into

panic

by

the arrival

of

their

evening

meal,

mistaking

he sound of the food van for

that of a fascist ank. When

they

eventually

came under

ire from

Nationalist

troops,

one man

began

to

scream

for

help,

believing

himselfto

be

bleeding

o

death.

In

fact,

the

water canister

hanging

above

his head

had

been

punctured

nd

doused

him

with water. After

days

of combat and little

sleep,

some soldiers

began

to

display symptoms

of

shell

shock,

failing

to react to

enemy

fire and

refusing

o

take

cover.51

Even

those familiarwith combat were shocked

by

the situation

n

the

early

months

of the war.

Ludwig

Renn,

an

experienced

irst

world war

officer,

began

to sob

uncontrollably

as he tried

to

reprimand

junior

officer,

a

week

without

sleep

taking

its toll.52

47

Interview with Alfred

Katzenstein,

5

February

1999.

48

Katzenstein, Einblicke,

op.

cit., i,

71-2.

49

SAPMO-BArch,

DY

55/SgY

11/V237/12/190,

269.

50

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1453,

6-7.

Erinnerungen

Wilhelm

Zajen.

51

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY 11/V237/13/208,

77,

79. Karl

Po.

52

Staatsbibliothek

zu Berlin

-

Preugfischer

Kulturbesitz,

Archiv

des

Aufbau-Verlages

(Dep.

38)

(henceforth

Archiv des

Aufbau-Verlages),

M619,

141.







McLellan:Wanted o be

a LittleLenin'

299

But

if

these were the

problems

associated

with the

first

days

of

fighting,

new

challenges

appeared

as

the war

dragged

on,

and

morale faded.

During

the

course

of

the

war,

initial

optimism

could

quickly give way

to

despair.

After

his

first

experiences

at the battle

of

Quinto

in

late

August

1937,

the novelist

Willi

Bredel had written

in

his

diary,

'I

don't

just

feel

healthy,

but fresh and

lively

like seldom

before.'53

But on

returning

to

Paris in the summer of

1938,

Bredel

estimated that the

past

12

months

had

aged

him

by

10

years.54

The German

volunteers were

involved

in

every

major

battle of the

war,

with a

correspond-

ingly

high casualty

rate. Six

months after

baking

under the hot

sun at

the

battle of

Brunete,

the volunteers

found themselves

fighting

at Teruel

in

one of

the coldest winters of

the

century.

As the

majority

had no safe home to return

to,

most

rejoined

their

Brigade

as soon as

they

had recovered

from

their

injuries.

Not

fighting

could

be

dispiriting

too. The German members of the

Thirteenth

Brigade

found

themselves

on

the

bleak

southern

front,

where

cold,

hunger

and boredom

ate into their morale. As

Jef

Last's

song

'On the Sierra

Front'

put

it:

'Those bare mountains were so

lonely/

That

enemy

fire almost

cheered us

up.'55

The men

of the Thirteenth

wryly

dubbed themselves the

'forgotten brigade', languishing

at the

top

of a

mountain,

while the Eleventh

received

all the

glory.

There were

few

opportunities

for

leave,

and the

replacement

of fallen

International

Brigade

volunteers

with

Spanish

conscripts

undermined the

solidarity

of the

troops. Experienced

soldiers were scattered

amongst

the

new

recruits,

a

very

different

situation from the

early

stages

of

the war when

platoons

and

companies

were

predominantly

German-speaking.

Veteran

memoirs

abound

with

complaints

about

shortages

of

weapons

and ammuni-

tion,

and the

poor

quality

of the

equipment

that

was

available.56

Even the most

committed

volunteers found it hard to

keep

up

their morale

under these con-

ditions.

Particularly

in

the later

stages

of

the

war,

as more

and more

friends

and comrades were

killed,

exile

in

Spain

could be

just

as

dispiriting

as exile

anywhere.

The

impossibility

of

sending

and

receiving regular

letters home

meant that soldiers had no news from loved ones for

years

on end. One officer

wrote

in

his

diary

on New

Year's

Day

1938 of his

'loneliness' and the

'empti-

ness'

and

'boredom'

of

the

war. 'Has the

war

already

blunted

everyone,

so that

no

one can

be

happy

with all their

heart?

Is the

hard battle of

Teruel

weighing

on

us all? Are

we all

thinking

too much about

home,

about our

homeland

somewhere

in

Europe?'57

As the

defeat of their

adopted

homeland came

to

seem

inevitable,

the soldiers'

displacement

returned

to

haunt them.

Losing

the

53

Stiftung

Archiv Akademie der

Kiinste

(henceforth SAdK),

Berlin,

Willi-Bredel-Archiv

Nr

870,

9.

Diary

entry

30

August

1937.

54

SAdK,

Berlin,

Willi-Bredel-Archiv

Nr

3109,

53.

W.

Bredel to L.

Bredel,

23

July

1938.

55

Busch,

Lieder

der

Arbeiterklasse,

p.

cit.

56

E.g.

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1411,

19.

Erinnerungen

Ewald Munschke.

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/0922,

59.

Erinnerungen

Gustav

Szinda.

57

Staats-

und

Universitatsbibliothek

Hamburg

Carl

von

Ossietzsky,

Alfred-Kantorowicz-

Archiv,

BI:K1.

The author

was

Hans

Kahle.







300

Journal

f

Contemporary

History

Vol

41

No

2

war

meant

ailing

heirnew-found

panish

riends,

nd

eaving

he

community

of the front or the solation nd

uncertainty

f

exile.

By

March

1938 morale

n

the

Eleventh

rigade

adreached

ts

nadir.

By

this

stage

of the

war,

Republicanroops

were n

an

almost onstant tateof with-

drawal.Onesoldier ad he

impression

hat

hey

were

arrivingust

n

time o

join

in the

retreat'.58

hosewho hadwitnessedhe victories

f the war's

early

stages

at least had their

memories

f

routing

he

fascists.

But

later

arrivals,

some of whom

only

received

ermission

o

travel

o

Spain

n

1938,

had the

feeling

hat the outcomeof the war had

beendecidedbefore

hey

had had

the

opportunity

o fire a

shot.59

Why

did

men continue o

fight

under

hese

conditions? fficial ommunistccountsend ocredit he

political

eadership

of the

Brigades.

0 In

some

cases,

reminding

men of their

nitial

deological

commitment

may

well

have

been effective.

A

member

f

the

Edgar

Andre

Battalion emembered momentof

collectivehesitationwhen

his

section,

depletedby heavy

ossesand disorientated

y

the

noise

of

the

battle,

were

orderedo

cross

a roadunder

eavy

ire.TheGermann

charge

f themachine

guns

roared

Get

over,

omrades,

et

over.Are

you

anti-fascists

r what? '

The

entire

ompany

rossedhe

street

without

osing

a

man.61

ommunistccounts

stressthe

importance

f

ideology,arguing

hat the

'fighting pirit'

of the

volunteers llowed hem o overcome

oor

leadership

nd

faulty

weapons.62

Veterans

f

the

first

worldwar oftenmade avourable

omparisons

etween

the soldiersof

the

International

rigades

nd those of the Kaiser's

rmy.63

Ludwig

Renn,

chief of staff

of the Eleventh

Brigade,

was

surprised

hat the

mendidnot tell

dirty

okes,

andattributedhis o their

political

ommitment.64

(They may

of

course have

simply

been reticent

in

the

presence

of a

senior

officer.)

Butover he courseof a

two-year

onflict,

political

ommitmentlonewas

unlikely

to

keep

soldiers

fighting.

As well

as

appealing

o

their fellow

volun-

teers as 'anti-fascists', erman ommandersesorted o jokingto lift the

morale

f

their

dazed

roops.

After he menof the

Edgar

Andre

Battalion

ad

reached

over,

one

of

their ommanders

egan

o

fool

around

withan

umbrel-

la he had

found,

pretending

t could

protect

him

from

enemy

ire.6"

When

writing

or

each

other,

veterans

ften

dwelton

the

camaraderie

f

army

ife,

emphasizing

he volunteers'

roup

dentity

nd

cheerfulness

n

adversity.

One

veteran ecalledhow a meal of

unripe

grapes

ed

to

what he described s

58

Interview with Alfred

Katzenstein,

5

February

1999.

59 Interview with

Max

Kahane,

22

February

1999.

60

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/0922,

87.

Erinnerungen

Gustav Szinda.

61

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1438,

6.

Erinnerungen

Petros

Laros.

62 Gustav

Szinda,

Die

XI.

Brigade

(Berlin 1956).

63

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1445,

2.

Erinnerungen

Reinhold Rau.

64 Archiv des

Aufbau-Verlages,

M619,

43.

65

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1438,

6.

Erinnerungen

Petros Laros.







McLellan:

I

Wanted

o be

a

Little

enin'

301

'volcanic'

diarrhoea

amongst

the

troops, resulting

n

a

general

oss

of

bowel

control.

However,

despite

the

misery

of

the

situation,

he concluded: 'We

helped

each

other,

often with

good

humour,

to

get

over these

difficulties.'66

Anotherremembered he

way younger

soldiers would

help

their older com-

rades

carry

heir

baggage.67

ltimately

t is difficult o

separate

he volunteers'

group

dentity

as soldiers

and their

political

dentity

as anti-fascists.

A

soldier's

attachment o his or her immediate

ompanionsmay

be

universal.But

there s

something specific

to

the

German communist

experience

here too.

People

who had

grown up

in

large

families

n

very poor

conditionsand had suffered

poverty

and

unemployment

n

the

1920s

were often

attracted o the

kinship

of

the

communist

movement.This sense

of

security

had been

shattered

n

1933;

the

community

of the International

Brigades

offered a chance to rebuild it.

Willy

Busch,

wounded at the

Jarama

ront,

wrote that the

knowledge

hat he

would

have to

leave

his comrades

was

worse

than

the

fear of

his

injuries.68

Separation

romone's comrades

might

mean

a

return

o

the

lonelinessand iso-

lation of

emigration.

Unlike

he firstworld war soldiers

discussed

n

Alexander

Watson's

article

in this

issue,

the German

volunteers

had no

prospect

of a

Heimatschufl.

Communal

singing

was

a

powerful

symbol

of

this new-found

solidarity.

When the

volunteers first

arrived,

they

marched into Madrid

singing

the

Internationale

nd other

songs

from

the

German

revolutionary

repertoire.69

Soldiers soon demanded

songs

which describedtheir new

situation,

and

German

writers

n

Spain

were

put

to work.

Ernst

Busch,

a

frequent

ollabora-

tor

of

Brecht,

n

1937 and 1938

travelledto

Spain,

where he

sang

for

the

troops

and

recorded

a

record

n

Barcelona.70

ongs

such as

'Spain'sSky'

(also

known as

'The

Thalmann

Column')

quickly

found favour with the

German

volunteers.

'Spain'sSky' expressed

the

volunteers'

pleasure

n

comradeship,

as well as their sense that this was

a war which must

be

won: 'Shoulder

o

shoulder with

unbeatablecomrades/ There's no retreat for us.' Its refrain

touched on

their forced

exile,

but

ended

triumphantly

with a statementof

intent: Thehomeland s far

away,

but we're

ready/To ight

and die for

you,

freedom '71

oicesraised

ogether

n

song

lifted the

troops' spirits

and fostered

belief

in

their

sharedcause

and

hope

for

the future.One

man

remembered

he

volunteers

singing

together

on the

night

before their

first

battle.72

Not

only

that,

the

songs

formed a

link

to

German

political

traditionswhich

ran

back

66

SAPMO-BArch,

gY/1434/1,

84.

Erinnerungen

einholdHentschke.

67

Szinda,

XI

Brigade, p.

cit.,

18.

68

SAPMO-BArch,

Y

55/SgY

11/V237/12/190,

12. 'Als deutcher

Antifaschist

ampfte

ch in

Spanien

n

der

amerikanischen

rigade

"Abraham

incoln"'.

69

SAPMO-BArch,

gY

11/V

237/13/204,

22.

Fritz

Rettmann,

Erlebnisse

ls

Polit.-Kom.

er

II.

Komp.

des

Edgar-Andre-Battl.'.

70

D.

Robb, 'Clowns,

Songs

and Lost

Utopias.

Karl

Enkel,

Reassessment f

the

Spanish

Civil

War'

n

Spanier

ller

Ldnder,Debatte,

9

(2)

(2001),

156-7.

71

Busch,

Liederder

Arbeiterklasse,

p.

cit.

72

SAPMO-BArch,

gY

11/

V237/12/189,

161-2.

Hans

Maassen,

UlrichFuchs Der Dichter

des

Tschapiew

Liedes'.







302

Journal

f

ContemporaryHistory

Vol

41

No 2

through

the

Rotfrontkimpferbund,

he

interwar

youth

movements,

and

the

trenches

of the first world war.

By

combining

he

volunteers'

politicalheritage

and their memoriesof Germany, they brought he homeland o us'.7

Songs

written

during

he war often memorialized hose who had

fallen,

and

the wish to

avenge

dead comrades could

be a

powerful

motivator.

Alfred

Kantorowicz wrote

that the

sight

of

bodies mutilated

by

the

enemy

in

December 1936 'hardened our

hate

and

gave

our

constancy

abnormal

strength.

From this

horror,

we

grasped

reservesof

strength

rom

places

that

normal bravesoldiers

could never

reach.'74

nother

account,however,

reveals

that

a decision

was

takennot to

show

the

bodies to

the

men. Political

commit-

ment

was felt to be

a

healthierand more

powerful

motive than

revenge.

A

political

commissaralso admitted hat fear that

'one

or

two'

comrades

might

be demoralized

by

the

gruesome ight

also

played

a

rolein

the decision o

bury

the

men

in

closed

coffins.75

Comradeswho

died were often rememberednot

just

as

good

soldiers,

but as

exemplary

communists.

A

letter home

in

June

1937

eulogized

a fellow

soldier

who refused o

give up

his

weapon

after

taking

a bullet

in

the

stomach,

shooting

on

until he bled to death. 'So died

a

Bolshevik.'76

In

many

cases,

the

Brigade eadership

resorted o tried and tested 'carrot'

and

'stick'

motivational

echniques.Giving

the soldiers a rest and

some

hot

food

could

work

wonders. The Eleventh

Brigade,

n

tatters

in

the

spring

of

1938,

was taken out of combatand

given

a chanceto rest and

regroup,

and

went

on to

fight

in

the battle of

the

Ebro. The

leader of a

partisan group

rememberedhow

he used

cigarettes

and

trips

to

the

local

town for sex

to reward his men

after a

successfulmission.77

hooting

deserters

and

self-

mutilatorswas not unheard

of,

although

he victims ended o be

Spanish

con-

scripts.78

Michael Uhl's exhaustiveresearches

uggest

that

only

two German

volunteerswere shot for

desertion.

The

more usual

punishment

was a

spell

in

a

work

camp

before

being

sent

back

to

the front."

Sometimesaction

against

those who

wavered

could be

more ad hoc:

political

commissar

Fritz

Rettmann

resortedto threateningone young volunteerwith his pistol to get him back

behind the lines.80

But

in

some cases

the will

to

fight

was

simply

not

strong

enough.

Communistrecords

show that

about

200 of

the volunteers

spent

some time

under

lock

and

key

-

that is to

say

that,

on

average,every

tenth German

volunteerwas

arrested

at

some

stage

of

his time in

Spain.

About half

of

these

73

SAPMO-BArch,

NY

4072/154,

120.

Fritz Rettmann

to Franz

Dahlem.

74 Alfred

Kantorowicz,

Spanisches

Tagebuch

(Berlin

1948),

52.

75

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY 11/V237/13/204,

38. Fritz

Rettmann,

'Erlebnisse

als

Polit.-Komm.

der

II.

Komp.'.

76

SAPMO-BArch,

DY

55/V241/113,

82.

77

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1349,

60.

Erinnerungen

Richard Stahlmann.

78

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY

30/1448,

17.

Erinnerungen

Karl

Deutscher.

79

Uhl,

Mythos Spanien, op.

cit.,

82.

80

SAPMO-BArch,

SgY 11/V237/13/204,

38. Fritz

Rettmann,

'Erlebnisse

als

Polit.-Komm.

der

II.

Komp.'.







McLellan:

Wanted o be

a

Little

Lenin'

303

arrests

took

place

as

a result of

desertion or

breaking Brigade

discipline.81

Michael Uhl

suggests

that

in

total

90 Germans

(about

3

per

cent)

deserted.82

While

those who fled were a

tiny minority,

most veterans remembered

moments

in

which their

own motivation

had

faltered.

It was for this

reason

that veterans

struggled

to

recognize

themselves

in the one-dimensional

heroes

of official communist

histories of the war. In memoirs and

interviews,

veterans

returned

again

and

again

to the

subject

of heroism

and the

gap

between the

official

depictions

of the war and their own stories.

They

felt that

it

was

impossible

to live

up

to such a rarefied

concept

of

soldiering

without

doubt or

fear. One man

I

talked to

spoke

of his

alienation from official

accounts:

'Everyone

who had resisted was

a hero.

Only

the heroic

struggle

was shown.

But the

whole filth and so

on ... Fear is

something

human. But a hero

can't be

frightened.'"8

There can be no

doubt that the

majority

of the

German

volunteers were

highly

politically

committed.

Ideology

was

extremely important

to them

in

numerous

ways:

their

membership

of or

alignment

with

the

communist

movement,

the

sense of an

anti-fascist

crusade,

their

derogatory

attitudes

towards anarchists

and other

non-communists. But

alternative combat

motivations surface

in

memoirs too:

boredom,

longing

for

adventure,

desire to

escape

communist

infighting,

circumstance. The

wish to be a 'little

Lenin' was an

ideological

one,

but it also

expressed

a

yearning

for

a

purposeful,

active

masculinity.

Soldiers'

motivation was

neither

homogeneous

nor

stable. What

may

have

started as

an

ideological

decision

was

complicated

by

emotions felt for the

Spanish people

and for fellow

volunteers.

Ideology

was

important,

but it was

not

everything,

and

even

ideology

could

fail

you

in

the heat of

battle.

Particularly

in

retro-

spect,

soldiers

tended to

distance themselves from

the

brand of

self-sacrificing

heroism

propagated

by party

historians. Even

the veterans

themselves could

not

identify

with

the

steel-like

masculinity

of

communist

legend.

The German

volunteers

acted

on a

complex

mixture of

ideological

and

per-

sonal

motivation.

In

lives

shaped

by political

commitment,

campaigning

and

persecution,

there was

rarely

a

sharp

definition

between

personal

and ideo-

logical goals.

Victory

in

Spain

would have been

a

victory

for

the

Left,

but the

volunteers

hoped

it would

also be their

first

stop

on the

road back to

Germany,

to

their

families,

and

to civilian

lives.

Ultimately

it is

impossible

to

untangle

the

political

and

private

threads. As

another

Englishman

Esmond

Romilly

recognized, 'they

were

fighting

for their

cause and

they

were

fighting

as well for a

home to live

in

. .

.

they

had

staked

everything

on

this

war.'84

Nothing

demonstrated this more

clearly

than the fate of the

German volun-

teers after the demobilization of the

Brigades.

While their

international

81

Uhl,

'Die

Internationalen

Brigaden',

op.

cit.,

507.

82

Uhl,

Mythos Spanien,

op.

cit.,

82.

83

Interview with

Roman

Rubinstein,

5

January

1999.

84

Quoted

in

Preston,

A

Concise

History of

the

Spanish

Civil

War

(London

1996),

114.







304

Journal

f

Contemporaryistory

ol

41

No 2

comrades-in-armseturned

home,

they

had no

choice

but

to remain

n

Spain

and

wait for the war to

play

itself out.

According

o

one

volunteer,

ears

stood

in

the

eyes

of

the Germans

as

they

gave up

their

weapons. 'They

were

no

normal

weapons

.

.

.

they

were

weapons

that

were

carried

in

the

hands of

workers for a

just

cause,

for

peace,

for

socialism and for the liberation

of

humankind.'8s

or all the bathos

in

these

lines,

they give

a sense of how

much

the Germanvolunteers

had

ventured.

Although

they

had

volunteered o

take

up

arms

in

Spain,

once the war was over

they

had no choice but to

carry

on

fighting.

Josie

McLellan

is Lecturer

n

Modern

EuropeanHistory

at the

University

of

Bristol.

Her

publications

nclude

Antifascism

nd

Memory

n East

Germany.

Remembering

he International

Brigades

1945-1989

(Oxford

2004).

She is

currently

working

on a

study

of

sexuality

and

everyday

ife

underEast German

ommunism.

85 Kurt

Hofer,

'Wir

kampfen

weiter'

in

Immer

bereit

fiir

die

Verteidigung

der

Freiheit

des

Volkes.

Spaniens Freiheitskampf

1936-1939

(Berlin 1956),

59.

McLellan Josie_'I Wanted to Be a Little Lenin'- Ideology and the German International Brigade...

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