[ Miguel Ferguson, !Brigadistas! An American Anti-Fascist in the
Spanish Civil War, ed. Paul Buhle and Fraser Ottanelli, art by Anne
Timmons (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2022).]
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U.S. FIGHTERS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR  
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Roger Bybee
September 1, 2023
MRonline
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_ Miguel Ferguson, !Brigadistas! An American Anti-Fascist in the
Spanish Civil War, ed. Paul Buhle and Fraser Ottanelli, art by Anne
Timmons (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2022). _

Barcelona, January 1937., Agustí Centelles.

 

_Brigadistas: An American Anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War_ is a
page-turner of a graphic novel, dramatically illuminating the courage
and commitment of young Americans willing to put their lives on the
line against fascism rising in Spain.

Written crisply by Miguel Ferguson and illustrated memorably by Anne
Timmons, _Brigadistas_ movingly relates how the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade fought to defend democratic Spain against fascism when it
faced insuperable odds. Adding to the novel’s sharpness is the
editing of historians Paul Buhle and Fraser Ottanelli.

The story of U.S. fighters is viewed through the eyes of one American,
Abe Rubenoff, a composite fictional character drawn extensively from
the real and remarkable Abe Osheroff. (Osheroff went on to become a
legendary figure, fighting fascism his entire life: in Spain,
Normandy, Mississippi in the 1960s, and Central America in the 1980s.)

_Brigadistas_ is compellingly fast paced as it traces the route
followed by Rubenoff, who combines combative street smarts and an
urgent sense of solidarity with fellow Jews suffering under the iron
heel of fascism across the ocean in Germany and Italy. Rubenoff and
his gang of street kids first showed their youthful fighting spirit by
setting aflame the Nazi flag flying over the SS Bremen steamship that
landed in the New York harbor to be celebrated by Manhattan’s
fawning elite.

But Rubenoff and his comrades in and around the Young Communist League
hungered for more than splashy symbolic actions like the Bremen caper.
Each atrocity in Spain, like the horrific bombing of civilians in
Guernica conducted by the Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Legion, drew
these young men closer to the fight.

The battlelines in Spain were drawn between the democratic, leftist
Republican government and the fascist Nationalists led by Francisco
Franco in alliance with business elites and the Catholic Church.
Inevitably, men like Rubenoff found themselves drawn to the
battlelines where Spanish democracy struggled against a heavily armed
fascist force, backed fully by the murderous tyrannies of Germany and
Italy. The two major fascist powers provided their Spanish compatriots
with a limitless flow of the latest aircraft weapons, ammunition, and
newly developed strategies. Italy even contributed 80,000 troops to
the fascist side.

_Brigadistas_ deftly integrates the personal dilemmas faced by those
fully dedicated to Spanish democracy. After throwing themselves into
the Spanish democrats’ cause, getting to Spain required sidestepping
their parents’ and lovers’ deeply felt resistance. Rubenoff found
it difficult to break the news to his girlfriend Caroline, even though
her Catholic Worker background made her sympathetic to his beliefs.
But the separation filled the couple with anguish.

Deep personal bonds were not the only major barrier. It also meant
breaking the U.S. neutrality law against U.S. citizens taking part in
the Spanish conflict, and finding a surreptitious route to Spain.
Moreover, reaching Spain meant incredible dangers for men like
Rubenoff and his fellow volunteers, as when their ship to Spain was
sunk by Italian fighter planes and submarines.

Once finally assembled in Spain, Rubenoff and his comrades—drawn
from various parts of the U.S. Left—set up the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade to directly fight on the side of the Republicans. Roughly
2,800 Americans took part, with a large contingent comprised of Jews,
like Rubenoff, from the New York area. They were led by Oliver Law, a
Black veteran of the First World War. Even for the leftist
Brigadistas, it was an extraordinary moment to see a Black man being
the _comandante_ of whites.

Law supplied indispensable leadership for the Lincoln Brigadistas, who
sorely lacked basic expertise with weapons, much less engagement in
actual armed conflict. But Law forged the ragtag Lincoln Brigade into
a genuine military force capable of important missions for the
Republic.

The civil war experience included serious privations, with the
Brigadistas exhausted from constant action, enduring illness, and
going hungry at times. Further, they were perpetually outgunned by the
fascist forces, who counted on a steady, limitless flow of weapons and
ammunition from Germany and Italy.

_Brigadistas_ also captures the ongoing absence of the U.S.
fighters’ loved ones. In one letter, Rubenoff writes to Caroline in
New York to frankly share the problems faced by the Brigade and the
pain of being cut off from each other. Movingly, he writes: “We all
know that will happen if Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini aren’t
stopped, and we’re ready to give our lives to the cause.” But the
novel also includes some amusing moments, such as when Rubenoff finds
himself drawn into a barroom brawl with Ernest Hemingway, who at the
time was a war correspondent sympathetic to the Republican cause.

Caroline, raised in the Catholic Worker tradition and with leftist
impulses of her own, joins Abe in Spain as part of a medical corps of
Americans. While joyful about being reunited, the skies over Spain are
growingly increasingly dark.

If there is any flaw in _Brigadistas_, the decisive and devastating
role of the Neutrality Act is not stressed sufficiently. Perversely,
the law effectively shut off the flow of desperately needed weapons to
Spanish democrats, while U.S. corporations easily circumvented the
Act. Most notorious was Texaco and its pro-Hitler CEO Torkild Rieber,
who kept Franco’s military force supplied with ample oil and other
critical petroleum products, all provided on credit. Texaco also gave
key bits of timely intelligence, as detailed in Adam Hochschild’s
excellent _Spain Is in Our Hearts_. Several U.S. automakers, including
Ford, provided 12,000 trucks to Franco’s forces. Despite the
increasing concern about fascism growing among U.S. citizens, Texaco
and other corporations were throwing their full weight behind the
fascists.

After three years of brutal conflict, the Spanish Republic and the
Brigadistas finally found themselves unable to turn back the tide so
heavily driven by Germany, Italy, and U.S.-based corporate allies. The
Republicans, recognizing looming defeat in early 1939, sent the
Brigadistas back to the United States with deeply felt gratitude.
“You can go proudly. You are history, you are legend,” one
Spaniard tells the Brigade.

Franco would follow up his fascist victory with thirty-six years of
bloody-handed dictatorship, ending only with his death in 1975.
Franco’s close alliance in the U.S. fight against leftist opponents
in Europe and fascist Spain’s role in the Cold War was deeply valued
by U.S. policymakers. Former president Richard Nixon, for example,
declared, “General Franco was a loyal friend and ally of the United
States.”

The Brigadistas, who would eventually be seen as “premature
antifascists” who took the fast-emerging fascist threat seriously
enough to risk their lives, returned to a United States that was
belatedly but fully mobilizing against the fascist threat in Europe,
which had grown more dangerous as the Spanish Civil War raged.

Many Brigadistas, like the real-life Abe Osheroff, would continue in
their antifascist beliefs by joining with the U.S. armed forces in
fighting some of the most perilous battles of the Second World War.
But the Brigadistas didn’t halt their activism after the Second
World War; a substantial number played leading roles in the fight for
Black civil rights and against U.S. imperial ventures abroad. The
Brigadistas left behind a profound legacy of courage and international
solidarity for the U.S. left that still resonates today.

A bonus to _Brigadistas_ readers is historian Paul Buhle’s lively
and insightful afterword on “The Comic and the Spanish Civil War.”
Buhle has penned over a dozen comic books and has been the godfather
of the growing stream of graphic novels coming from the left.
Buhle’s essay not only covers the Civil War, but also gives a
brilliant overview of the politics of comic books after the Second
World War.

 
About Roger Bybee
Roger Bybee is a long-time labor and left journalist. His email is
winterbybee[at]gmail.com, and has a Roger D. Bybee Facebook page.

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