Chris Hall reviews ‘Voluntarios Por La Revolucion’

We are pleased to put online Christopher Hall’s review of Andy Durgan’s Voluntarios Por La Revolucion: la milicia internacional del POUM en la Guerra Civil Espanola

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Books about anti-fascist foreign volunteers serving in non-International Brigades units are quite thin on the ground. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia– his personal account of his time in Spain fighting in the POUM militia, has dominated the field. John Cornford poet and communist, who later died fighting in the International Brigades, served in the POUM and described a chaotic action at Perdiguera. I myself wrote two books on British and Irish volunteers who served in the ILP (Independent Labour Party) Contingent. There have been some personal accounts of foreign volunteers who worked for the POUM such as Mary Low and Juan Brea and a biography about Orwell’s commander Georges Kopp by Marc Wildemeersch. But no one has undertaken any detailed study of foreign anti-fascist volunteers outside the International Brigades until now.

Andy Durgan’s book on the international anti-fascist volunteers who served in the POUM makes use of material from the Soviet archives and includes previously unpublished information. The book does cover the ILP Contingent, but they formed less than 10% of the foreign fighters in the POUM. Durgan does not make Orwell’s account of his time in Spain a major pillar of his story of the international volunteers in the POUM. There is a chapter on the ILP Contingent and brief biographies of each volunteer. New material from the Soviet archives includes the details of the interrogation of Georges Kopp and shows the role of ILP volunteer Frank Frankford in the arrest of Kopp. There is also a discussion about the issue of whether Bob Edwards, ILP leader in Spain, was a KGB spy later in his life.

Perhaps as many as five hundred foreign anti-fascists joined the POUM. The author identifies 367 of them from 28 different nationalities and there is a brief biography of each one. They belonged to a mass of small socialist parties such as the Italian Maximalist Socialist Party, German Socialist Workers Party (SAPD) and the French Socialiste Ouvrier et Paysan (PSOP). These parties were all members of the London Bureau, an International that included both the POUM and the ILP. Among the foreign volunteers there were also small numbers of militants from Trotskyite organisations. The largest number of volunteers by nationality were Germans (104), followed by Italians (82) and then French (39). Thirty-eight British and Irish Volunteers are listed. Many of the foreign volunteers were of Jewish origin.

To give you a flavour of the kind of little know foreign volunteer that Durgan has discovered is the German volunteer, Hans Reiter. He arrived in Spain in 1935 having previously served in the Foreign Legion. In the Civil War he firstly commanded a POUM machine gun squad and took part in fighting around Quicena in September 1936. He then became the commander of the POUM shock troops who were known as the ‘Batallon de Choque’ from February to June 1937. Later in the civil war he became a Major in the Republican Army rising to be the Commander of the 97^th Mixed Brigade in 1938. After the Civil War he was interned in a camp in Algeria until 1942 from where he joined Leclerc’s famous ‘Free French’ armoured forces and took part in the liberation of Paris in 1944.

The book looks at the military organisation of the POUM and its lack of arms. The author lists the military actions involving POUM forces- several of which involved significant losses- and shows Orwell makes several mistakes in his account of an action fought in March 1937. Durgan shows that the POUM militia were better organised and disciplined than Orwell suggests. By June 1937 it seems the POUM 29^th Division had become an effective military force when they briefly captured enemy positions on Loma de las Martires- the nearest the Republicans got to recapturing the strategic town of Huesca. They were ordered to retreat and suffered heavy losses including some international volunteers. Republican General Sebastian Pozas congratulated the POUM commander, Rovira on the courage and behaviour of his men.

In addition, the book includes information on the POUM medical services. Durgan lists the medical international volunteers, including both men and women such as Louis Levin and Margarete Zimbal. He also mentions the small number of female foreign volunteers who served at the front with a chapter on the Argentine militant Mika Etchebehere who led a POUM militia column near Madrid after the death of her husband.

Durgans’ book is meticulously researched and for the first time provides a detailed account of those international anti-fascist volunteers who fought against fascism and for the revolution in the POUM militia. The book is in Spanish and hopefully soon an English version will become available, making the story of these remarkable men and women open to a larger audience.

Christopher Hall

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Voluntarios Por La Revolucion: la milicia internacional del POUM en la Guerra Civil Espanola, by Andy Durgan (Laertes, 2022)

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This review was first printed in the International Brigades Memorial Trust magazine ¡NO PASARÁN!

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