The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom, and the Spanish Civil War

The precise number is uncertain, but around 35,000 foreign fighters may have served in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Of these, perhaps one in five died, becoming, in the words of Ernest Hemingway, ‘part of the earth of Spain’. Hemingway was one among a legion of journalists and writers who made the Brigades world-famous. Justly so: here was an army of volunteers, from 65 different countries, that became a military elite, the shock-troops of the beleaguered Spanish Republic, the vanguard of the global struggle against fascism. Not all were heroic. Some failed the test of battle. Some were simply escaping the dole queues and slums at home. Some were mor