Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War

by Rosenstone; Robert

• ISBN13: 9781412809979
• ISBN10: 1412809975
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2009-04-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Between 1936 and 1938, some 3,000 young Americans sailed to France and crossed the Pyrenees to take part in the brutal civil war raging in Spain. Virtually all joined the International Brigades, formed under the auspices of the Soviet-led Comintern and largely directed by Communists. Yet a large number were not Communists; their activism was inspired by domestic and international crises of the 1930s, and colored by idealism Th e men who went to Spain came out of a radical subculture that emerged from the Depression and the New Deal. Th is radicalism was a native plant, but it was nourished from abroad. In the thirties the menace of fascism seemed to be spreading like cancer across Europe, giving an international aspect to many domestic problems in the United States. To intellectuals, students, unionists, liberals, and leftists, the threat of fascism was so real that many came to believe that if it was not stopped in Spain, eventually they would have to take up arms against fascism at home. To understand the Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War it is necessary to bury some of the shibboleths of cold war years. Dissidence in the United States occurs in response to perceptions of reality on this side of the Atlantic, not because of the wishes of men in the Soviet Union. The members of the Lincoln Battalion were genuine products of America, and their story is properly a page in American military and political history. From them, one can learn much about the world of the 1930s and perhaps even something about the potential of modern man for thought and action in time of crisis.

Author Biography

Robert A. Rosenstone is professor of history at the California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. He is the founding editor of Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice and associate editor of Film Historia. He is the author of many books including The Man Who Swam Into History, History on Film / Film on History, and King of Odessa.

Table of Contents

Introduction To The Transaction Edition	p. xi
Preface	p. xix
Acknowledgments	p. xxiii
A Note On The Notes	p. xxv
Roll Call	p. xxvii
Madrid Is the Heart	p. 21
World in Crisis	p. 50
The Comintern Paves the Way	p. 84
Those Who Volunteered	p. 97
The Road to Battle	p. 122
A Valley Called Jarama	p. 149
Generals of the Rear	p. 165
The Plains of Brunete	p. 174
Quinto and Belchite: The Apogee	p. 189
The Lessons of War	p. 213
The Snows of Teruel	p. 230
The Mind of the Volunteer	p. 255
Collapse in Aragon	p. 276
The Wages of Discipline	p. 297
Offensive on the Ebro	p. 313
The Soldiers Become Veterans	p. 334
An Untarnished Epic	p. 360
Backgrounds of the Volunteers	p. 367
"Terror" in the Lincoln Battalion	p. 373
A Note on Sources	p. 376
Notes	p. 385
Index	p. 409
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