Scarcely a year goes by in which we do not see another documentary on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American volunteers who traveled to Spain to fight on the side of the government there as it sought to repel the rebel army of Francisco Franco. As the Loyalist government of the 1930s in Spain was supported by the Soviet Union and Franco’s forces received material aid from Nazi Germany, chroniclers of the Spanish conflict play it as a drama that presaged the Second World War with a scaled-down cast of characters.
After all, during World War II, the United States was allied with Great Britain and the Soviet Union battling against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. Moreover, these filmed chronicles have a ready audience on college campuses, public television stations and, for that matter, in major film studios.
As all of the above are helmed by people who accept the world view implicit in such characterizations, celluloid tributes to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade are likely to continue to premiere and circulate as long as nationally funded broadcasting, American universities and Hollywood exist. Yet and still, students graduate from these institutions with only this oft-recited record of the Spanish Civil War perpetuate the story, particularly if, degree in hand, they go on to write textbooks or even commercial tomes and, of course, make documentaries.
Against this backdrop, a reassessment, reappraisal, and, yes, a revision, of the history of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade is in order. For instance, for years after the civil war ended, U. S. government officials have known of the role of Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) in fomenting espionage against the United States.
The FBI file on the group is a voluminous one.
Moreover, since the end of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, researchers combing the archives of the Communist Internationale in Russia—who notably do not include any of the Brigade historians mentioned above—have learned of an even more sinister aspect of the Brigadiers’ exploits: They shot their deserters and then claimed that they were combat casualties.
In between times, that is, during the period encompassing the end of World War II and the close of the Cold War, Brigade veterans who survived the conflict embraced political causes in a manner that worked in concert with Soviet interests for about as long as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics existed. For example:
• Brigade veteran Steve Nelson was involved in the plot to relay atomic secrets from the U. S. to the Soviet Union;
• Now-elderly veterans of the Brigade took to the streets opposing U. S. involvement in the Vietnam War; and
• Even more geriatric Brigade veterans, including Nelson, raised money to buy ambulances for the Soviet-supported Marxist government of Nicaragua in the 1980s as it sought to squelch the anti-communist Contras who tried to displace the Sandinista regime.
While they were alive, VALB spokesmen worked the college lecture circuit for all it was worth. Indeed, they may be the only American combat veterans greeted like heroes in the halls of academe in recent memory.
Ironically, their bogeyman turned out to be a bit less fearsome than they had charicatured him to be. Although Franco did rule for life, he appears to be illustrative of the contention of the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick that authoritarian regimes eventually give way to democracies while totalitarian governments never do.
Franco was arguably of the former stripe. Although he governed for life, he was succeeded by a series of democratically elected leaders—a trend still holding to this day.
He even allowed for competitive local elections during his lifetime.
His relations with Hitler were curious. In Liberal Fascism, author Jonah Goldberg points out that Il Claudilo saved thousands of Jews, much to the consternation of Der Fuhrer.
Also, despite portraits of him as a right-wing dictator, Franco remained a lifelong socialist, perhaps because of his implacable anti-communism. As F. Reid Buckley points out, the dictator’s idea of market forces at work were Christmas bonuses for state employees—the main industry in Franco’s Spain.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
