ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE
The name Abraham Lincoln Brigade refers to about 3,000 Americans who volunteered to defend the Spanish Republic during Spain's 1936 to 1939 civil war. The brigade included not only those who fought in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, but also Americans who fought in other battalions or served in medical units. Although the average age of the American volunteers was twenty-seven, the brigade included three members as young as eighteen, and others as old as fifty-nine and sixty. Many volunteers were students or teachers, but others were seamen, autoworkers, steelworkers, electricians, and doctors or nurses.
The International Brigades that fought in the Spanish Civil War were entirely integrated, and more than eighty members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were African American. In fact, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion was commanded, until he died in battle, by Oliver Law, an African-American volunteer from Chicago, marking the first time in American history that an integrated military force was led by an African-American officer. Most of the American volunteers were unmarried, although, as their letters reveal, many had relationships back home that they tried to sustain by correspondence. Most were from urban areas; about 18 percent came from New York. Perhaps a third were Jews, which was not surprising in view of Adolf Hitler's support of the rebel general Francisco Franco. About twothirds of the American volunteers were Communists, but their primary motive for volunteering was antifascism. Many of them believed a world war would ensue if fascism were not defeated, and in fact the Spanish Civil War effectively signaled the opening of World War II.
The Abraham Lincoln Battalion officially entered the war when volunteers fought at Jarama in February 1937, though some American volunteers had fought in Madrid in the fall of 1936 before the International Brigades were organized. After Jarama, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion fought in unbearable heat in the battle of Brunete in July 1937. This battle was followed by battles at Quinto and Belchite in August and Fuentes de Ebro in October. Then, after a brief period of training, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion endured the snows of Teruel in January and February of 1938. In spring of that year
they faced continuous bombing from the air and Panzer-style massed tank assaults at key points. The battalion then crossed the Ebro River southwest of Barcelona during the summer of 1938 to initiate the largest battle of the war. Barcelona and Madrid fell to Franco's forces in early 1939, and the war ended on April 1 with the surrender of the Loyalist forces. About seven hundred members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade died in Spain.
During the war and after, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade symbolized internationalism for a country that was often isolationist. The heroism and self-sacrifice of the American volunteers, each of whom made a personal decision to join the war effort, became a model for succeeding generations. Although the surviving members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were often hounded during the anticommunist McCarthy period of the 1950s, by the 1990s sentiment had changed, and several monuments were erected in their honor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carroll, Peter. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. 1994.
Nelson, Cary, and Hendricks, Jefferson, eds. Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the Spanish Civil War. 1996.
Wolff, Milton. Another Hill: An Autobiographical Novel about the Spanish Civil War. 1994.
