The Thälmann Battalion

When the military coup of July 1936 triggered the Spanish Civil War, many European countries—Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Portugal—were already governed by right-wing or even fascist dictatorships that forced people of the left to go into exile. For German antifascists, France and Czechoslovakia were the most important exile destinations. In contrast, for Central Europeans, Spain was a faraway country that came onto their radar only after the electoral victory of the Popular Front in February 1936.

Even so, it was the military coup and the fierce resistance it provoked from the Spanish labor movement that became the beacon of solidarity for people determined to stop the advance of “fascism.” This explains the unprecedented mobilization of as many as 38,000 people from around the world who fought to defend the Republic, above all in the International Brigades. At the same time, these volunteers knew very little about the much more complex causes of the war and the ideological conflicts within the Republican side.

The most recent estimates suggest that no more than 3,000 Germans served in the International Brigades. Most were Communists who were in hiding or in exile when the Civil War began, and they arrived in Spain mainly after October 1936, when the Comintern began its official recruitment policy. Organized by General Headquarters in Albacete, the Brigades were initially grouped into four battalions by language and nationality within the 11th Brigade. By the end of October, this Brigade consisted of five battalions, two of which were composed primarily of German speakers. One, the Edgar André battalion, was named after a Communist leader who was in prison in Germany; the other, the Thälmann battalion, after a German antifascist who had been executed by the Nazis.

The euphoria that accompanied the creation of the International Brigades soon turned into disillusionment for many of the volunteers, who had to endure harsh conditions at the front, such as scarce rations and inadequate weapons, as well as the ideological conflicts in the Republican zone and the pressure of increasing Stalinist control and the persecution of dissidents. That persecution targeted those who rejected the ideological line dictated by Moscow, such as dissident Marxists, social democrats, and anarcho-syndicalists.

In the end, at most 1,200 of the 3,000 Germans in the International Brigades survived through World War II. About half of them went to the Soviet occupation zone, which in October 1949 became the German Democratic Republic (GDR), where some would go on to hold important political positions, and the story of their struggle became part of the official memory culture

SB