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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade: the Historiography of the American soldiers in the Spanish American War
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In 1987, Alvah Bessie and Albert Pargo edited a collection of writings by veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that gathered a number of these earlier writings and consolidated them into one volume.<ref> Bessie, Alvah and Albert Pargo, eds., <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0853457247/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0853457247&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=95a011af1ec117470282c71b4c0f440c Our Fight: Writings by Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Spain 1936 -1939]</i>, Monthly Review Press (New York) 1987.</ref> This volume demonstrated the diversity of material written by the American veterans. The volume includes poems, interviews and excerpts from scholarly works. Pargo and Bessie have selected writings that try to walk the reader through various aspects of the Spanish Civil War. One of the highlights of the book is an interview conducted by Studs Terkel of Irving Goff. Goff was a guerilla warfare specialist in Spain. Terkel interviewed Goff about his experiences during World War II with OSS as guerrilla warfare specialist in Africa and Italy.
===The Second Generation of Books===
After the first person accounts of the Lincoln Brigade were published, a number of historians began writing books about the Lincoln Brigade and their role in Spanish Civil War. Oddly enough, perhaps the most comprehensive account of the Lincoln Brigade during this second generation of books was drafted by Arthur Landis, an American veteran of the Spanish Civil War, entitled The Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Unfortunately, these histories suffer from a number of problems. While Landis’ work is the most comprehensive, it is also potentially the most biased. The other books relied on incomplete information for their conclusions. Additionally, a number of the American veterans during 1950s and 1960s were also discouraged from talking openly about the experiences because they were concerned about being labeled communists.
[[File:Crusade_of_the_Left.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|<i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006C04TY/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0006C04TY&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=d3e58b9f0677289401ab71e67822450c Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War]</i> by Richard A. Rosentone]] Richard A. Rosenstone is good example of the second generation of historians who researched the Lincoln Brigade. In his 1967 article “The Men of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” and his book <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006C04TY/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0006C04TY&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=d3e58b9f0677289401ab71e67822450c Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War]</i>, which was published in 1969, Rosenstone attempted to developed a portrait of the men who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Unlike Landis and Colodny, he did not participate in the Spanish Civil War. In “The Men of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” he tried to understand who was an “average member” of the Lincoln Brigade. Unfortunately, a number of his conclusions are speculative. Because he is attempting to provide an outline for an average member of the brigade his descriptions are ultimately inaccurate.
In Rosenstone’s discussion of the veteran’s political party affiliations, he stated that anywhere from 25 to 80 percent of the volunteers were Communist party members. He states that “no one really knows because no records of political affiliations were kept.” <ref> Rosenstone, Richard, “The Men of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade” <i>Journal of American History</i>, Vol. 54, No. 2. (1967) p. 335.</ref> In fact, the Soviets in Moscow maintained complete records regarding the political affiliations of the volunteers. Those records indicated that almost 80 percent of the American volunteers were members of the Communist party or the Young Communist Party.
Partly because Rosenstone can only provide an estimate of the number of Communists in the Brigade, he deemphasizes the importance of the role that Communism played in their lives. He states, “[m]ost of them had joined the party because of its worldwide opposition to fascism, and many did so specifically because of its support for the Spanish Republic.” Rosenstone goes further and says that perhaps the Brigade members joined the Communist Party because they had the best parties and that their primary concern was defending the world from fascism. “Spain merely reflected the depth of their dedication; there the forces of the decade---simplified into fascism to the idea of democracy versus fascism.” Rosenstone softened the hard edges of the volunteers by deemphasizing their Communist affiliations, but in the process he watered down their beliefs and motivations for going to Spain.
Rosenstone faced just as many problems when he attempted to determine the ethnic makeup of the brigade. He estimated that Jews comprised approximately 25 percent of the brigade. Rosenstone deduced this number simply by looking at the surnames of the known volunteers. After reviewing the names he determined that approximately 20 percent “had obviously Jewish names.” He then simply rounded up to 25 percent. Rosenstone admitted that it would be difficult to accurately determine the percentage of Jewish Americans because a number of the volunteers adopted nom de guerres during the war. Just as Rosenstone estimated the number of Jews in the Brigade, he guessed that there were probably 50 African American volunteers. It is also clear from Rosenstone’s title that he is only concerned with the men of the Lincoln Brigade, ignored the 60 American women who volunteered in Spain. <ref>Rosenstone, 335, 337.</ref>
Rosenstone’s work suffers from a number of problems. First, Rosenstone did not have sufficient historical resources at his disposal to develop his themes. Second, Rosenstone clearly believes that the veterans were essentially noble. In order to make them sympathetic to an American audience he deemphasized the role the Communist party played in their participation in the Spanish Civil War. It is not clear whether or not this deception was intentional. Additionally, members of the Lincoln Brigade were less willing to talk or give their private materials to historians so soon after a number of them had been persecuted during the 1950s for their Communist affiliations.
Unlike Landis, Albert Pargo focuses on the role Jews played in the International Brigade. Pargo argued in his article “Jews in the International Brigade” that Jews viewed the Civil War in Spain as the “first organized resistance to European fascism” and anti-Semitism. He emphasized the Jewish character of not only the American contingent, but a number of the international volunteers. Pargo stated that approximately 900 to 1100 of the 2800 American volunteers were Jews. Pargo criticized Landis’s scholarly history of the Spanish Civil War because he completely ignored the Jewish participation in the Lincoln Bridgade. Pargo argued that the level of Jewish consciousness within the left was “minimal” and it did not occur to Landis that a number of American Jews were in Europe fighting anti-Semitism. Not surprisingly, Jews occupied important positions in the American veterans. Both the highest ranking and last commander of the Lincoln Battalions were Jews. More material was available for Pargo in his analysis than was available to Landis back in 1967.<ref> Pargo, Albert, “Jews in the International Brigades”, <i>Jewish Currents Reprint</i>, February-March 1979, p. 3-19.</ref>
===The Third Generation===
Since the creation of the archives at Brandeis University and UC Berkley, historians have had an opportunity to search a number of first person writings of members of the Lincoln Brigade. These archives have allowed historians to start writing a third generation of books and articles on the Lincoln Brigade. Peter Carroll’s books <i>The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade</i>, <i>The Good Fight Continues: World War II Letters from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade</i> and Danny Duncan Collum’s <i>African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: “This Ain’t Ethiopia, But It’ll Do”</i> represent what Carroll referred to as the third generation of books on the Lincoln Brigade. Unlike the previous generations of books, these works are utilizing relied heavily on the Lincoln Brigade and Soviet Spanish Civil War archives.
Carroll’s The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade is an attempt to provide an up to date and comprehensive history of the members of the Lincoln Brigade both before, during and after the Spanish Civil War. Carroll states that “[f]or forty years, from the time the first American volunteers had journeyed to Spain in December 1936, they had stood outside the mainstream of society.” It is clear from Carroll’s work that these men and women stood outside of mainstream of society even before they journeyed to Spain.
Carroll makes it clear that most of the volunteers went to Spain primarily for political reasons. The veterans were overwhelmingly Communists. Carroll never states that Landis attempted to hide the volunteers’ true political beliefs, but he makes it clear that Communism played a vital role in a number of the volunteer’s lives. Not surprisingly, Carroll starts his book with Moscow sending a secret communiqué to the American Communist party leadership in New York to start recruiting Communists to fight in Spain for the Popular Front government. <ref>Carroll, 9</ref> Unlike Rosenstone, Carroll makes it clear that the men and women recruited by the Communist party were for the most part radicals who “nearly all accepted the leadership of the Communist party, at least for the war’s duration.” He asserts that most of the veterans had little interest specifically in the Spanish War. They were good Communists, who for various reasons decided that the fight in Spain against fascism justified their sacrifice.
Not only were the volunteers overwhelmingly Communists, they were much older than previously believed. The average age of Americans serving in the Brigade was twenty-seven years old. This supports Carroll’s contention that these people made an informed political decision to go to Spain. These men and women were not impressionable youths.
