The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War: Giles Tremlett (1936)
The bravery and sacrifice of the International Brigades is a defining moment of the 20th Century and its fight against fascism.
Over 35,000 men and women from 61 different countries travelled to Spain to defend democracy against General Franco’s army as it attempted to overthrow the young Republic and replace it with dictatorship.
Although inexperienced, poorly trained, and ill-equipped, these men and women were driven by a simple desire to do the right thing, placing themselves in the firing line against the combined forces or Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, fighting side-by-side with a makeshift Republican army that had been left abandoned by the Allies to itsr fate.
It was a war made famous by writers such as Ernest Hemmingway, Laurie Lee, George Orwell; the first war to be brought vividly into people’s homes by the iconic photographic journalism of Robert Capa.
For the young men and women of the International Brigades it “Represented a beginning of pride – of the future standing up, free and alive.
For many, those few years in Spain were remembered as a kaleidoscopic mix of love, sex, war and revolution, for others place of terror, torture and death. For all those who fought in it, it would become the defining moment of their lives.
In his compelling new narrative history, The International Brigades, Fascism, Freedom and The Spanish Civil War (published by Bloomsbury) the Elizabeth Longford Prize winning historian and journalist, Giles Tremlett, takes us deep into the heart of 1930s Spain, a country divided between anarchists, communists and socialists on one side and reactionary generals, landowners and priests on the other – To tell us the story of just how far ordinary people are willing to go to defend democracy against overwhelming odds.
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Show notes
Scene One: Barcelona on July 19, 1936 - The day that the (failed) coup launched by General Franco and others reaches Barcelona
Scene Two: Paris, Quai d'Orsay - October 10 1936 - Groups of young men hang around the platform for the night-train to Marseilles. They include Cambridge poet John Cornford, future Harvard Classics professor Bernard Knox, communist writer John Sommerfield and British-based German exile painter Jan Kurzke.
Scene Three: Madrid - November 8 1936 - The same people who arrived just four weeks earlier are now in uniform marching up the Gran Via in Madrid to the University City, which will soon become the front line.
Memento: A varsity-style team jacket worn by the USA team for the People's Olympiad that never happened (organisers had specially requested they include Black athletes for this multicultural event - and several came). Only one of these jackets survives. It is in the Tamiment Library at NYU.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Interview: John Hillman
Guest: Giles Tremlett
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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Click here to order The International Brigades by Giles Tremlett from our friends at John Sandoe’s Books.
The story of the 35,000+ volunteers, from sixty-one countries, who fought in Spain against Franco’s forces. (John Sandoe’s)
More about the scenes
Scene One: Barcelona on July 19, 1936 - The day that the (failed) coup launched by General Franco and others reaches Barcelona, sparking a counter-revolution that sees the streets taken over by anarchists, communists, socialists and many other "-ists", (NOT fascists) - turning the coup into civil war. It is also the day when the People's Olympiad, a rival to Hitler's Berlin Games, is meant to start (and doesn't) with hundreds of foreign athletes caught in their hotels. With troops sent by Hitler and Mussolini fighting on one side, Britain and France playing at appeasement, and Stalin allying with Spain's democrats, is this the start of WW2 or, at least, a curtain-raiser?
Scene Two: Paris, Quai d'Orsay - October 10 1936 - Groups of young men from a dozen or more nations hang around the platform for the night-train to Marseilles, pretending to have nothing to do with one another. They include Cambridge poet John Cornford, future Harvard Classics professor Bernard Knox, communist writer John Sommerfield and British-based German exile painter Jan Kurzke. They are about to inaugurate what will become known as "the Red Express", which will carry thousands of volunteers to join the International Brigades - the army of 35,000 idealists from 80 countries that defends Spain's democratic Republic. The train is a Tower of Babel on wheels, but they can all join together to sing The Internationale (in a dozen languages).
Scene Three: Madrid - November 8 1936 - The same people who arrived just four weeks earlier are now in uniform marching up the Gran Via in Madrid to the University City, which will soon become the front line. They are untrained and think that idealism will make them good soldiers. Cornford's group mans a machine gun in the Philosophy Faculty, which had only arrived the previous day. They build barricades out of thick tomes early 19th century German philosophy and Indian metaphysics, which are dense enough to stop enemy bullets before they reach page 350. The government has fled. Madrid is expected to fall, but miraculously, it does not - in part because of these volunteer fighters. most of the group will die, or be injured, before the New Year.
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