The Last Battle

Whoever thought a plaque could cause such a stir. On Feb. 9, a bronze tablet was unveiled in the New Hampshire State House. On the plaque a rebellious clenched fist emerged from the background, and the words "Voluntarios Internacionales" circled above a globe wrapped in a star. Just hours after its unveiling, the memorial was removed to the cheers of its opponents.

State Sen. Burt Cohen, a Democrat, initiated the campaign for the plaque to honor New Hampshire men who volunteered to fight Franco in the Spanish Civil War over 60 years ago. In 1937, sponsored by the Communist Party, a dozen residents of New Hampshire joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. They crossed the Pyrenees by foot, sacrificing food, limbs, and sometimes their lives so the Spanish Republic might survive Franco's military coup. England, France and the United States refused to aid the legitimate democratic republic, while Germany and Italy generously donated modern guns, tanks and bombs to the fascist side.

Cohen believed the members of the Brigade deserved to be remembered because they had valiantly fought against a fascist army before the U.S. officially declared war on international fascism. He saw their combat as the ultimate example of heroism and commitment to the democratic principle of freedom. But others around the state clamored that the Brigaders had been agents of a Soviet plan to spread communism around the world.

This conflicting perception of the Brigade is not new. Since their return from Spain in 1938, some considered members of the Lincoln Brigade American heroes; others, like the State Department and some members of the Catholic Church, classified them as dangerous Bolshevik traitors. During the 1940s, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers interrogated them in their homes and harassed their family members. Many vets had difficulty holding down jobs because FBI agents would convince their bosses to fire the "communist agitators."

During World War II, the veterans of the Spanish war enthusiastically enlisted to fight in the American army against Hitler and the Axis. Still mourning the Spanish Republic's defeat, they yearned for democracy's victory over fascism, for the chance to participate in the triumph of good over evil. An unwritten policy of the U.S. Army barred the Lincoln vets from the front lines; like blacks during the war, the Brigaders, despite their combat experience, were relegated to demeaning tasks far from battlefields. In the 1950s, communist witch-hunters imprisoned and fined veterans of the Brigade because of their present or former affiliation to the Communist Party.

The truth about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and its record in Spain has been intentionally distorted in this country for six decades. True, they were leftists, many of them members of the Communist Party who participated in organizing unions during the Depression years. True, they violated the U.S. policy of neutrality to fight in Spain. True, the Communist party paid for their fare to Spain, organized them into a military unit and provided them with uniforms and guns dating from the First World War, which stood no chance against the modern German artillery.

But aside from these facts, the Lincoln Brigade did not fight for a communist revolution. It combated fascism in Spain to preserve a legally elected democracy "of the people, by the people, for the people," as its namesake had proclaimed at Gettysburg. Many of them were blacks weary of lynchings in the South and day-to-day mistreatment by whites. Others were Jews who feared for their fellow Jews in Hitler's Germany. They fought fascism in Spain to strike back at the American fascist elements of racism, police violence against organized workers and inequality of opportunity for Jews, blacks and immigrants. They feared the "fascist" segments of American society would allow full-fledged fascism to usurp American democracy.

This month New Hampshire residents could have reversed the lies and humiliation inflicted on the American veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Sixty years after the Spanish Civil War, 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a room filled with New Hampshire citizens debated whether to honor the veterans with a plaque in the State House. The plaque had been approved by the legislature's Historical Committee, but House conservatives abruptly ordered its removal, disappointing sons and daughters of Spanish Civil War veterans who had traveled long distances to attend the ceremony.

The hearing brought veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam who zealously argued both for and against the plaque. Those who had fought to defeat communism were offended by the plaque's communist-looking symbols: the clenched fist and the star enveloping the Earth. One opponent of the plaque, wearing a decorated military hat, shouted, "The only good Commie is a dead one!"

Fifty years younger than most of those who testified and veteran of no war, I presented the last testimony of the day's five-hour debate. I told the committee that Franco was not a "good Catholic monarch," but rather a fascist who tried to homogenize Spain by brutally suppressing regional cultures and languages.

Before the hearing, Cohen had told me, "This is the last battle of the Spanish Civil War, and I think Franco will win again." His prediction was correct; the committee voted unanimously against the plaque. This time fascism won on American soil.

Claudia Gregoire '01 is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House.