Josie McLellan_'I Wanted to be a Little Lenin': Ideology and the German International Brigade Volunteers

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'I Wanted to be a Little Lenin': Ideology and the German International Brigade Volunteers Author(s): Josie McLellan Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), pp. 287-304Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036387Accessed: 13-10-2015 02:24 UTC

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Journal of Contemporary History Copyright @ 2006 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol 41(2), 287-304. ISSN 0022-0094. DOI: 10. 177/0022009406062069

Josie McLellan

'I Wanted to be a Little Lenin': Ideology and the German International Brigade Volunteers

During the Spanish Civil War, about 2800 Germans signed up to fight in the International Brigades.' The British student John Cornford wrote: 'They are the finest people in some ways I've ever met. In a way they have lost everything, have been through enough to break most people, and remain strong and cheerful and humorous. If anything is revolutionary it is these comrades.'2 As Cornford pointed out, the Germans who converged on Spain in 1936/7 had hard times behind them. Many of them had been imprisoned in Germany after the nazi seizure of power, and subsequently expelled from the country and stripped of their citizenship. Others had fled to centres of German anti-fascist resistance like Paris, Prague and Moscow, hoping to undermine the 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 spanischen 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' in 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 volunteers 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 motivation. 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 of 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 prepare 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 to be a Little Lenin' 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 those of other twentieth-century soldiers: cold, fear, hunger and pain on the one hand, esprit de corps and a sense of professional pride on the other. This article asks what difference ideology made.

For all the fervent internationalism of the Republican war effort, in retrospect the history of the German volunteers appears now more closely wedded to events in Germany than the broader sweep of Spanish history. As we shall see, the volunteers' motivation stemmed in 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 remained much more tangible than vague conceptions of Popular Front victory in Spain. Equally, when it comes to the sources available to the historian of this topic, the most enduring traces of the volunteers' experiences are to be found in German archives. Very few contemporary sources, such as letters, have survived. Many of the soldiers were unable or unwilling to contact their families in Germany. Letters sent to friends and relatives in exile frequently went missing in the war years. Likewise, soldiers who kept diaries often lost them in the chaos that followed demobilization.6 The Brigade press and publications were heavily censored and tend to reflect the party line fairly assiduously. The International Brigade archives in Moscow are invaluable sources for the military history of the conflict, but inevitably, the histories of individual soldiers tend to be eclipsed by the broader sweep of military administration and discipline.

After German capitulation in 1945, the majority of the surviving veterans settled in East Germany.7 Most of them were communists, and either emotional ties or party discipline drew them to the new socialist state. After the West German Communist Party was banned in 1956, many West German veterans were ordered by the party to 'retreat' to the East. The East German state liked to present itself as the 'better Germany', representative of the progressive, anti-fascist German tradition, and the Spanish Civil War was an important part of this legitimizing tactic. The International Brigades were often portrayed as the vanguard of communist anti-fascism and the fore- runners of the East German armed forces. This official version of events had an impact on individual memories too. Even veterans who had travelled to Spain as non-communists often filtered their experiences through 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.




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 to be a Little Lenin' 29 I1

The collapse of communism also played an important role in the interviews carried out for this project in the late 1990s. All the veterans I interviewed had been members of the East German Communist Party. The end of the East German state affected their narratives of Spain in different ways. A few had started to reassess the period and flesh out their own experiences with newly available information on anarchist and Trotskyist groups. 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 failures of state socialism, many felt that Spain held the key to today's political questions, and contrasted their political commitment with the lack of interest of their grandchildren's generation. Their nostalgia for Spain was partly political, but it also contained wistfulness for the adventure and romance of their youth.

This article follows the volunteers from their decision to volunteer, through their arrival in Spain, their first exposure to combat and the experience of 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 volunteer was not identical with the motivation to fight. Nor can any soldier be said to have fought for one reason alone - what kept men in battle was complex and shifted over time. For some men, an ini- tially abstract commitment to anti-fascism may have evolved into loyalty to their fellow soldiers. In other cases, lust for adventure and action may have been complemented by a growing political awareness. What follows is an attempt to separate out the strands of combat motivation, and examine the ways in which they interacted and overlapped.

The most commonly voiced hope amongst those travelling to 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 connection with their own political predicament. While the volunteers condemned Franco's regime as dangerous and illegitimate, but the situation in Germany was rarely far from their minds either. By 1936 it looked as if Hitler's dictatorship was there to stay. Opportunities for political action within Germany were very limited indeed, but striking a blow against Spanish fascism could, the volunteers hoped, mark the beginning of the end for German fascism too. And, of course, the involvement of the Condor Legion strengthened their conviction that, once Madrid fell, Berlin would soon follow. The civil war was both a displaced fight against Hitler and a chance to strike a blow against international fascism. 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,




With a cry of 'Pasaremos'. We'll chuck whatever's left of the swastika Into old Father Rhine.12

Hew Strachan writes: 'Men need to be hardened in peace if they are to be tough enough for war.'13 Despite their lack of formal military training, the German volunteers had been toughened by their experiences since the nazi seizure of power. Those who had suffered police or concentration camp imprisonment in Germany had first-hand experience of the brutal nature of the regime and the isolated position of German anti-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 to face the nazis with a gun in your hand. That played a huge role.'14 Again and again, veterans cited the opportunity to 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 thrown its weight behind attempts to form a German Popular Front, many saw the International Brigades as part of a militant socialist tradition. Another veteran recounted:

What I had dreamt as a child, when my father told me stories about the struggle of the working 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 soldier of the working class."

Another remembered a 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 to the Communist Party.17 Like 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 politically active in French or Czechoslovakian exile. Once the international communist movement gave national parties the go-ahead to start sending men to Spain, many felt it was their duty as communists to volunteer for the Brigades.

Nevertheless, political conviction was not the only motivation for 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 Interview with Roman Rubinstein, 4 January 1999. 15 Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (henceforth SAPMO-BArch), SgY 11/V237/13/206, 85. Erlebnisbericht Willy 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: ' Wanted to be a Little Lenin' 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 networks 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 themselves 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.




desperation and get things straight with ourselves again.'22 Regler and Kantorowicz felt that the war offered an identifiable enemy and a chance to reclaim the tarnished ideology of communism by risking one's life. But in Kantorowicz's case at least, this was not the only motivation for travelling to Spain. His diaries dating from this period describe his desire to overcome his middle-class, bookish background and slight bespectacled appearance and prove himself in combat - as a communist and as a man. 'I must be there at the front', he wrote.23 Whatever Regler and Kantorowicz's motives for volunteering, what is interesting is the fact that neither of them renounced his decision to go to Spain after his break with the party - both remained adamant that it had been the right thing to do. In retrospect, however, their break with communism may have put a slightly different cast on events. Kantorowicz cer- tainly went out of his way to give the impression that he had been an ordinary foot soldier, rather than admit his membership of the functionary caste.24

Unlike soldiers who were uprooted from their homes to join the army, the German volunteers generally remembered their 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 to the alterna- tives. For those who travelled to Spain out of a sense of political conviction, their immediate experiences upon arrival tended to reinforce their sense of purpose. Men who had been involved in underground, illegal political work relished being able to 'fight with an open visor'.25 One veteran recalled his metamorphosis from 'an illegal' to 'a person again, a comrade'. Fighting in 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 'secretive and aloof'.26

But even once the volunteers reached Spain, primary groups could be slow to form. One man noted how easily the French and British volunteers mixed with one another, while the Germans remained quiet, reserved and mistrustful. 'The suspicion that somebody could be a nazi spy hung in the air.'27 For many, the turning point was when they first held a gun. Fritz Rettmann, who acted as a political commissar in Spain, remembered a dramatic improvement in morale when weapons arrived: the petty quarrels and poor discipline which had characterized the waiting period disappeared.28 One 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.




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 shared his feeling that Spain returned meaning and order to their lives; it was now possible to see their defeat in Germany as one lost battle in a much longer war. Not only did arrival in Spain give the volunteers a new sense of purpose, it also seemed to 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 feeling physically transformed. As one account put it: 'You couldn't see the years in prisons and concentration camps any more. Joy and the confidence of victory were written on their faces.'3o

Key to the soldiers' sense of pride and confidence in their abilities was the enthusiastic welcome of the Spanish people. From their reception in Madrid in 1936 to their farewell parade in Barcelona in October 1938, the volunteers sensed that they had the full support of the local population. Veterans remembered feeling 'as if we were at home, with friends, with comrades',31 as local farmers pushed oranges, bread and wine onto the train which was taking the soldiers to the front.32 This often led to a lasting emotional attachment to Spain, and a sense that it had become their new Heimat or homeland. For German communists embittered by the defeat of 1933, this kind of popular enthusiasm formed a poignant contrast to the indifference and betrayal of the German masses. 'The people of Madrid are heroes, not us', wrote one soldier to a friend back home in the Sudetenland.33 While many of the volunteers may have felt a strong abstract commitment to the Spanish Republic at the moment of volunteering, this became much more tangible, emotional and concrete as they came into contact with the Spanish people. The fact that such contact was necessarily limited by the lack of a common language and the efforts of the Brigade leadership to keep their soldiers unaware of the complexities of the political situation meant that the volunteers often came away with an idealized view of the country for which they were fighting. It was easier to love a fuzzily-defined, romanticized Spain than the Germany they had left behind.34 Many volunteers ended up feeling as if they were fighting for two causes, but must have found it difficult to avoid the conclusion that Spain was altogether the more straightforward of 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.




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 population 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 communists, 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.




their communist identity. One veteran wrote how he was 'filled with pride' to 'be allowed to help' as an International Brigades volunteer. 'I have never forgotten the trust the party gave me.'39 For him, political action was something inextricably linked to the communist movement, participation something 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 for the content of front newspapers and any brigade publications.40 Reports written after the war on the German volunteers assessed them on both military and political criteria.41 It was not unusual for a volunteer to be described as a 'brave and disciplined soldier' but 'politically primitive, not active, not always comradely'.42 Political instruction took place on a voluntary basis, but it is fair to say that the daily life of the brigades was relatively ideologically saturated.

Perhaps the most striking indication of the effect this may have had on the volunteers is their attitude towards other political groups on the Left. Reading veteran memoirs, one can only conclude that the divisions among the soldiers of the Left were greater than those between opposing armies. Anarchists and Trotskyists appear in veteran memoirs as, at best, undisciplined, unreliable soldiers, and at worst, traitors to the Spanish Republic. Many communists were convinced that anarchists and other non-communists were being used by enemy intelligence to infiltrate the ranks. The danger of enemy agents was a common preoccupation in Spain, reflected in the line in the Song of the International Brigades, 'No mercy to the dog who betrays us!'.43 The willing- ness of the volunteers actively to persecute other Leftists should also not be underestimated: a number of German soldiers transferred to the Republican military police and were involved with the interrogation of 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 irresponsibility was responsible for International Brigade losses. It was claimed that anarchist soldiers deserted at the prospect of combat,41 and in one case they were said to have surrendered territory 'soaked with the blood of our comrades', which had cost the Internationals 80 dead and 200 wounded.46 This impression may 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 Contemporary History Vol 41 No 2

Spanish, and access only to Brigade newspapers, had little choice but to accept what information they were given.

No amount of ideological fervour could prepare volunteers for the reality of battle. The first experience of combat could seem like a form of sensory assault. Alfred Katzenstein remembered the 'terrible cries' during his first attack and the stomach-turning smell of dead mules, rapidly bloating and decomposing under the summer sun.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 admitted that, 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 fire' of Nationalist tanks, comrades 'crying out left and right', 'bullets whistling from all sides'. When the remains of the writer's company reached safety, they could not believe that the retreat had only taken a few minutes. 'It seemed to us as if the inferno had lasted for hours.'49

Accounts of the excitement or rush of combat are much harder to find, possibly due to the veterans' unwillingness to be seen to glorify war. One man described his company's attack as an 'avalanche of fire', adding 'a frenzy gripped us all'.o0 But such moments of euphoria are rare in veteran memoirs: far more common is a sense of shambolic panic. One man described how disorientated volunteers, newly arrived in Spain and immediately dispatched to the Madrid front, were thrown into panic by the arrival of their evening meal, mistaking the sound of the food van for that of a fascist tank. When they eventually came under fire from Nationalist troops, one man began to scream for help, believing himself to be bleeding to death. In fact, the water canister hanging above his head had been punctured and 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 to take cover.51 Even those familiar with combat were shocked by the situation in the early months of the war. Ludwig Renn, an experienced first world war officer, began to sob uncontrollably as he tried to reprimand a 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.




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 conditions. 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, op. 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.




war meant failing their new-found Spanish friends, and leaving the community of the front for the isolation and uncertainty of exile.

By March 1938 morale in the Eleventh Brigade had reached its nadir. By this stage of the war, Republican troops were in an almost constant state of with- drawal. One soldier had the impression that they were 'arriving just in time to join in the retreat'.58 Those who had witnessed the victories of the war's early stages at least had their memories of routing the fascists. But later arrivals, some of whom only received permission to travel to Spain in 1938, had the feeling that the outcome of the war had been decided before they had had the opportunity to fire a shot.59 Why did men continue to fight under these conditions? Official communist accounts tend to credit the political leadership of the Brigades. 60 In some cases, reminding men of their initial ideological commitment may well have been effective. A member of the Edgar Andre Battalion remembered a moment of collective hesitation when his section, depleted by heavy losses and disorientated by the noise of the battle, were ordered to cross a road under heavy fire. The German in charge of the machine guns roared 'Get over, comrades, get over. Are you anti-fascists or what?!' The entire company crossed the street without losing a man.61 Communist accounts stress the importance of ideology, arguing that the 'fighting spirit' of the volunteers allowed them to overcome poor leadership and faulty weapons.62 Veterans of the first world war often made favourable comparisons between the soldiers of the International Brigades and those of the Kaiser's army.63 Ludwig Renn, chief of staff of the Eleventh Brigade, was surprised that the men did not tell dirty jokes, and attributed this to their political commitment.64 (They may of course have simply been reticent in the presence of a senior officer.)

But over the course of a two-year conflict, political commitment alone was unlikely to keep soldiers fighting. As well as appealing to their fellow volunteers as 'anti-fascists', German commanders resorted to joking to lift the morale of their dazed troops. After the men of the Edgar Andre Battalion had reached cover, one of their commanders began to fool around with an umbrel- la he had found, pretending it could protect him from enemy fire.6" When writing for each other, veterans often dwelt on the camaraderie of army life, emphasizing the volunteers' group identity and cheerfulness in adversity. One veteran recalled how a meal of unripe grapes led to what he described as

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.




'volcanic' diarrhoea amongst the troops, resulting in a general loss 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 Another remembered the way younger soldiers would help their older comrades carry their baggage.67 Ultimately it is difficult to separate the volunteers' group identity as soldiers and their political identity as anti-fascists. A soldier's attachment to his or her immediate companions may be universal. But there is something specific to the German communist experience here too. People who had grown up in large families in very poor conditions and had suffered poverty and unemployment in the 1920s were often attracted to the kinship of the communist movement. This sense of security had been shattered in 1933; the community of the International Brigades offered a chance to rebuild it. Willy Busch, wounded at the Jarama front, wrote that the knowledge that he would have to leave his comrades was worse than the fear of his injuries.68 Separation from one's comrades might mean a return to the loneliness and isolation of emigration. Unlike the first world war soldiers discussed in 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 and other songs from the German revolutionary repertoire.69 Soldiers soon demanded songs which described their new situation, and German writers in Spain were put to work. Ernst Busch, a frequent collabora- tor of Brecht, in 1937 and 1938 travelled to Spain, where he sang for the troops and recorded a record in Barcelona.70 Songs such as 'Spain's Sky' (also known as 'The Thalmann Column') quickly found favour with the German volunteers. 'Spain's Sky' expressed the volunteers' pleasure in comradeship, as well as their sense that this was a war which must be won: 'Shoulder to shoulder with unbeatable comrades/ There's no retreat for us.' Its refrain touched on their forced exile, but ended triumphantly with a statement of intent: 'The homeland is far away, but we're ready/To fight and die for you, freedom!'71 Voices raised together in song lifted the troops' spirits and fostered belief in their shared cause and hope for the future. One man remembered the volunteers singing together on the night before their first battle.72 Not only that, the songs formed a link to German political traditions which ran back

66 SAPMO-BArch, SgY/1434/1, 84. Erinnerungen Reinhold Hentschke. 67 Szinda, XI Brigade, op. cit., 18. 68 SAPMO-BArch, DY 55/SgY 11/V237/12/190, 12. 'Als deutcher Antifaschist kampfte ich in Spanien in der amerikanischen Brigade "Abraham Lincoln"'. 69 SAPMO-BArch, SgY 11/V 237/13/204, 22. Fritz Rettmann, 'Erlebnisse als Polit.-Kom. der II. Komp. des Edgar-Andre-Battl.'. 70 D. Robb, 'Clowns, Songs and Lost Utopias. Karl Enkel, 'Reassessment of the Spanish Civil War' in Spanier aller Ldnder, Debatte, 9 (2) (2001), 156-7. 71 Busch, Lieder der Arbeiterklasse, op. cit. 72 SAPMO-BArch, SgY 11/ V237/12/189, 161-2. Hans Maassen, 'Ulrich Fuchs - Der Dichter des Tschapiew Liedes'.




through the Rotfrontkimpferbund, the interwar youth movements, and the trenches of the first world war. By combining the volunteers' political heritage and their memories of Germany, 'they brought the homeland to us'.7

Songs written during the war often memorialized those 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 reserves of strength from places that normal brave soldiers could never reach.'74 Another account, however, reveals that a decision was taken not to show the bodies to the men. Political commitment was felt to be a healthier and more powerful motive than revenge. A political commissar also admitted that fear that 'one or two' comrades might be demoralized by the gruesome sight also played a role in the decision to bury the men in closed coffins.75 Comrades who died were often remembered not just as good soldiers, but as exemplary communists. A letter home in June 1937 eulogized a fellow soldier who refused to 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 leadership resorted to tried and tested 'carrot' and 'stick' motivational techniques. Giving the soldiers a rest and some hot food could work wonders. The Eleventh Brigade, in tatters in the spring of 1938, was taken out of combat and given a chance to rest and regroup, and went on to fight in the battle of the Ebro. The leader of a partisan group remembered how he used cigarettes and trips to the local town for sex to reward his men after a successful mission.77 Shooting deserters and self- mutilators was not unheard of, although the victims tended to be Spanish conscripts.78 Michael Uhl's exhaustive researches suggest that only two German volunteers were shot for desertion. The more usual punishment was a spell in a work camp before being sent back to the front." Sometimes action against those who wavered could be more ad hoc: political commissar Fritz Rettmann resorted to threatening one young volunteer with his pistol to get him back behind the lines.80

But in some cases the will to fight was simply not strong enough. Communist records show that about 200 of the volunteers spent some time under lock and key - that is to say that, on average, every tenth German volunteer was 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.'.




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 retrospect, 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 personal motivation. In lives shaped by political commitment, campaigning and persecution, there was rarely a sharp definition between personal and ideological 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 volunteers 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.




comrades-in-arms returned home, they had no choice but to remain in Spain and wait for the war to play itself out. According to one volunteer, tears 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 For all the bathos in these lines, they give a sense of how much the German volunteers had ventured. Although they had volunteered to take up arms in Spain, once the war was over they had no choice but to carry on fighting.

Josie McLellan is Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Bristol.

Her publications include Antifascism and Memory in East Germany. Remembering the International Brigades 1945-1989 (Oxford 2004).

She is currently working on a study of sexuality and everyday life under East German communism.

85 Kurt Hofer, 'Wir kampfen weiter' in Immer bereit fiir die Verteidigung der Freiheit des Volkes. Spaniens Freiheitskampf 1936-1939 (Berlin 1956), 59.



Documents

Josie McLellan_'I Wanted to be a Little Lenin': Ideology and the German International Brigade Volunteers