Regarding foreign assistance to the opposing sides in the Spanish Civil War.

 

The following are indispensible:

 

Salas Larazabal, Ramon, _Historia del Ejercito Popolar de la Republica_

 

Sala Larabzabal, Jesus, _Intevencion extranjera en la Guerra de Espana_

 

Alcofar Massaes, “Spansky” _Los extranjeros que luchaaron in la gueera civil espanola_.

 

_CTV: Los legionarios italianos en la guerra de Espana_

 

Schwartz, _La internacionalizacion de la guerra civil espanola_

 

Hidalgo Salazar, _La ayuda Alemana en Espana_

 

Andreu Castells, _La Brigadas internacionales de la guerra de Espana_.

 

Just about everything about the war is very political. A good example is Landis’ book on the international brigades, in which he calls Italian C.V. 3 tankettes “heavy tanks” and Russian T-26s “light tanks.”

 

While it’s possible that upwards of 15,000-18,000 Germans may have served in Spain, the peak strength at any one time was much less. And most Germans did not serve in the front lines. Their most important contribution was in providing training cadres.

 

Likewise, while perhaps 75,000 Italians served in Spain, probably no more than 50,000 were ever there at any one time, and that number peaked early, at Guadalanara.

 

As for the Internationals, numbers are all over the map, but 50,000 or so may be about right. However, the political slant which most leftist authors take on the war leads them to omit many thousands of others wo served. There were an unknown number of Russians, who were never counted as part of the IB, among them Pavlov and Rodmistev. Many Anarchists and Trotskyites simply went to Spain and enlisted in the early months of the war — George Orwell, for example, was never a member of the IB, though he is often referred to as such; the whole point of Homage to Catalonia is that the Communists were doing in the Trots.

 

And as for the work the IB did, well a lot of it is very inflated by Stalin’s propaganda machine. The defense of Madrid, for example, was conducted by workers’ militia, including many Anarchists, plus the remnants of the old standing army. The first interbrigadistas turned up when the issue had already been decided. There’s an order of battle drawn from Republican documents in Martinez Bande’s La Lucha en torna a Madrid.

 

It’s actually rather sad that more than 60 years after the end of the SCW we are still getting highly biased accounts such as those produced by Paul Preston — even Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany get better press than the Spanish Nationalists.

 

A. A. Nofi