Berkeley, Calif.
The affection of the media for the “official” leftist narrative on the totalitarian crimes of the 20th century appears permanent and incorrigible. Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 was one such atrocity. You can learn all about it in a book called Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, published 70 years ago. But the obituarists at the New York Times seem not to have cracked their copy yet. Their view of the Spanish war as an evergreen source of liberal-radical fantasies was reaffirmed on January 17, in reporting the death of Milton Wolff, aged 92. The Times eulogized Wolff as an “Anti-Franco Leader,” calling him “the last commander of the American volunteers who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War and the longtime commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.” Unrepentant Stalinist would have been more accurate and more concise.
Wolff died in Berkeley, where I happened to be visiting. I knew Wolff well; he liked to be called by the Spanish nickname el Lobo, the wolf. He was a lifelong defender of the Soviet role in the Spanish Civil War and of the Moscow-created International Brigades (IB) in which he served.
The Times‘s obituarist, Douglas Martin, described Wolff wielding a machine gun at 21 and fighting in the mountains late in the hostilities. He quoted Hemingway on Wolff: “as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg.” Martin further praised Wolff for opposing U.S. recognition of the Franco regime and for his volunteering the aged American veterans of the International Brigades as soldiers to Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam war.
The latter action, if it took place (el Lobo was always a fabulist), was appalling. Still, one wonders what to make of the Times‘s having overlooked the most interesting “fact” about Wolff: his claimed service with the Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the CIA, in the Second World War. Martin writes, “Mr. Wolff said he was turned down for combat duty in World War II because of concerns about his leftist politics.” On his website (ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/karlahuebner/milt/milt.htm), Wolff stated that he “managed to see action in Italy and Burma.”
Serving the Allies in the Second World War would not have been dishonorable, making it the exception in a life marked most prominently by his assistance to Stalin in the betrayal of the Spanish Republic. The International Brigades recruited and sent by the Soviets to Spain were a political militia intended to extend Russian influence over local forces fighting for their survival. In this way the IB more resembled Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps than, say, the Flying Tigers–American pilots who flew Chinese aircraft against Japan.
The American participants in the “Abraham Lincoln Battalion” and other “green” units of the IB were notable for their lack of training or wartime experience–especially when compared with French, German, and Slavic veterans of the First World War, who joined the IB in much larger numbers. (There was not in fact any “Lincoln Brigade” in the Spanish Republican army, as the Times‘s obituarist is careful to note–the mistaken nomenclature is a common piece of Stalinist puffery.) Eventually, the Americans were used as police against Spanish leftists who resented Soviet manipulation.
The gap between most of the foreigners who went to Spain to fight, their persistent admirers, and the authentic historical memory of the Spanish people is wide; it could be designated the first example of a war with two realities–one in Spain and another in London and Manhattan. The phenomenon has continued: the Sandinista war in Nicaragua was completely different from its perception in the U.S. media, as is much of the Iraq war.
Orwell was the exception among the foreigners who flocked to Spain. He joined the militia of the POUM, an anti-Stalinist movement with deep roots among the Catalans. He saw and reported on the reality of Soviet betrayal of the Spanish Republicans–which turned out to be a prelude to Stalin’s pact with Hitler.
Milton Wolff and his cohort loathed Orwell and would bear no mention of him, even after the city of Barcelona dedicated a monument to the English truth-teller. The “Lincoln veterans” sealed themselves in a mental sarcophagus of Stalinist propaganda and never effectively dissented from it.
The New York Times noted that Wolff “fought successfully against the ‘subversive’ label pinned on the Lincoln veterans for decades.” In reality, Wolff’s group, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade or VALB, was always known as the hardest-core Stalinophilic entity among the Spanish Civil War veterans, most of whom shunned it. But thanks to the ignorance of the American media, Milton Wolff went to his death grinning with glee, knowing he had escaped accountability and kept his audience fooled.
Stephen Schwartz is the author (with Victor Alba) of Spanish Marxism vs. Soviet Communism: A History of the POUM.
