We Saw Spain Die

by Preston Paul

  On 25 September, Fischer and Jay Allen were given an astonishing scoop, presumably as a result of the close friendship with both Julio Álvarez del Vayo and Juan Negrín that they enjoyed. They were given permission to interview an Italian pilot who had crash-landed on 13 September and was being held at Prieto’s Ministry for the Navy and Air Force. The head of the Republican air force, Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, wanted to find out if the extremely frightened twenty-three-year-old with an Italian passport in the name of Vincenzo Bocalari was, in fact, as he claimed, an American national called Vincent Patriarca, born in City Island in the Bronx in New York. He spoke New York English with an Italian accent and Italian with a New York accent. Allen and Fischer assured him that they had no hostile intentions, although Fischer said: ‘You’re an adventurer and a damned fool and you are in a terrible mess. The government here has every right to shoot you. If you do the right thing we may be able to help you.’ In response to what Allen called a ‘puppy’s charm’, they believed his story.40

  A barber by trade, Patriarca had gone to Italy in 1932 to fulfil his ambition to be a flyer and had served in Abyssinia before coming to Spain, tempted by the spectacular wages offered by the rebels. Crying copious tears, he begged them to save his life. He claimed to have turned against the Francoists as a result of seeing executions of labourers in the south and of the decent treatment that he had received from his Republican captors. Fischer told him that they would try to secure his release, although his diary entry suggested that he was not optimistic. Nevertheless, he and Jay Allen informed the US Embassy. Claude Bowers took up his case through the chargé d’affairs in Madrid, Eric Wendelin, in response to a press campaign in the USA mounted by a miraculously concocted ‘Committee of One Thousand Mothers’. Álvarez del Vayo assured Wendelin that Patriarca would not be shot and would be well treated. He arranged for Patriarca to be placed in the custody of the embassy, where on first arrival, he cut ‘a pitiful figure’, according to Edward Knoblaugh of the Associated Press. However, when his confidence returned, Patriarca would watch aerial combats from the embassy gardens, shouting: ‘God, if only I could be up there, I’d show them.’ Wendelin secured Patriarca’s repatriation to the United States, where he made a name for himself denouncing the Republicans and praising the rebels before returning to Italy and a career in Mussolini’s air force.41

  On another visit to the front, near Quismondo, south-west of Madrid, towards the advancing African columns, Fischer was appalled by the casual attitude of the militia. They were not properly dug in but merely lying behind a feeble barricade of loose earth, incapable of stopping any bullet. He noted indignantly in his diary:

  Instead of digging trenches, which they could have done with a few shovels, they loafed and ate, ate beautifully. Most of them were tearing strips of dried bacon from pigs’ legs. Hills of melons, yellow and green, lent color to the scene. They drank wine. A militia man offered me a Havana cigar. Were they not earning ten pesetas a day? A good mechanic in town might be paid as much.

  Returning to Madrid, near Olias del Rey, he ran into a crowd of militiamen fleeing like sheep from Toledo where there had been an air-raid. This was the incident that was described in the article whose frankness led to Fischer being berated bitterly by Cockburn and Koltsov south of Madrid. The article was written on 8 October, although it did not appear in New York until sixteen days later. That Fischer should so firmly have defended the need to tell the truth about the Republic’s difficulties belies the notion that he religiously followed the Communist Party line.42 Despite their disagreement, Fischer and Koltsov remained on good terms.

  Fischer’s conclusion about the loss of Toledo could not have been grimmer:

  The fact is that all the troops at Toledo ran fast when the enemy approached. The government bears a large share of the guilt. Its political work was beneath contempt. It watched with indifference as the creeping demoralisation undermined the stamina of the men. The anarchists contributed heavily by their resentment of discipline and their antagonism to the officers. But the officers were not much good either.

  When he visited the front in early October, he was delighted to meet a unit made up of Spanish sportsmen, including runners, boxers, footballers and even bullfighters. However, he despaired of their lack of equipment and proper defensive fortifications as they awaited the advancing African columns, commenting:

  it might have fortified their spirit if a political leader from Madrid had come out to talk to them about the cause for which they were here, tell them what measures the government had already taken in the social and economic field to help the poor and oppressed, castigate Fascism and elaborate on the mass killings of the rebels in the south of Spain, remind them that this awaited them and their families if the government was defeated, inspire them, enthuse them, make them think and feel. Instead, the front was neglected by propagandists and, too, by the quartermaster. Has he no more machine guns to give them? No hand grenades? Is it impossible to send out workers to build real trenches here?43

  Fischer’s analysis of the domestic problems of the Republic was especially perceptive. Rather like Koltsov, Fischer was a man of great energy, unself-conscious curiosity and utterly uninhibited about getting to see important people, then giving them his opinion or even advice. He had friends among the entire Socialist leadership, but the realities of war altered his perceptions of them. He remained enthusiastic about Julio Álvarez del Vayo but, in contrast, came to feel highly critical, not to say contemptuous, of Francisco Largo Caballero. He had not been impressed when he interviewed him during his trip to Spain in the spring of 1936 and, on 3 April, Largo Caballero told him complacently that the Right could return only through a coup d’état which he was confident would be crushed.44 Now, Fischer was aware that comments could be heard in Madrid that a man nearing seventy was too old to be running a war.45 On the afternoon of 11 October, Fischer attended a mass meeting in Madrid passionately addressed by Álvarez del Vayo. The audience had been delighted when the Russian Ambassador Marcel Rosenberg was brought on stage. Afterwards, Fischer visited Rosenberg at the Hotel Palace where they shared their pessimism about the conduct of the war. He decided to write a letter to the prime minister, drawing his attention to the lack of a concerted war effort: ‘I banged it out feverishly in twenty minutes and took two street cars to the Foreign Office.’ There he was received by Álvarez del Vayo and spoke to him with a brutal frankness born in equal measure of their personal friendship and his own commitment to the Republican cause. He told the Foreign Minister of the lack of defensive preparations that he had seen on his visits to the front. When the minister agreed that valuable time had been lost, Fischer, with typical impetuousness, blurted out: ‘this is your opportunity to make history. You must assume charge of the defences of Madrid. The hell with this office. Can you not get in touch with the building unions and tell them to stop civilian work in Madrid and go out and construct trenches and gun nests? Could we not do that tomorrow?’ Álvarez del Vayo said that his efforts had been impeded because only Largo Caballero had the necessary authority. Fischer read out the draft of his letter and Álvarez del Vayo urged him to send it after cutting out any reference to Largo Caballero’s age, about which he was deeply sensitive.46

  On the morning of 12 October 1936, two Spanish friends translated Fischer’s letter. Although written in respectful terms, the content was devastating, particularly for a man who fancied himself as a great revolutionary. It compared the great mass mobilization that had taken place during the siege of Petrograd in 1919 with what was not happening in Madrid:

  I am profoundly disturbed by the present state of affairs here. Many measures which could easily be taken, which must be taken, are not being taken. I have been to the front often and I have inspected the environs of Madrid. Objectively, the situation is far from hopeless. There is no reason why, with your vast resources of men and enthusiasm, you should not hold the enemy at least at the present line. But what I missed most in my three weeks here is th
e energy and determination which should characterize a revolution. I have studied the Russian Revolution in great detail. When Petrograd was threatened in 1919 every citizen was organized. Nor did they wait for the Whites to come to them. Feverish political work accompanied tireless building of defences, mobilizing of new men, training of old soldiers, and preparation of officers’ cadres. Nothing was left undone. The city worked like a powerful motor… I tell you honestly I miss this spirit here. Of course, I know your difficulties and handicaps. You lack many necessary supplies. But you must do more than you have done. History will judge as criminals the men who allow the enemy to take Madrid… I must say: if men whom I know to be sincere and faithful revolutionaries were not in this government I would be inclined to believe that traitors and saboteurs are in charge of defending this city and of holding the front intact. That is the impression an objective observer must get.

  Moving from general criticisms to the specific charge made by many, Fischer pressed on:

  I want to ask you, for instance, this question: there are tens of thousands of building workers in Madrid. You have several cement and brick factories here. Why are you not building concrete trenches and dug-outs? Why do you not stop all civilian construction work in Madrid and send the working men out to erect an iron ‘Hindenburg line’ about thirty kilometres from Madrid which the enemy could not pass? In addition, the heights around the city should be fortified. All this could be accomplished in a relatively short period. It would improve the morale of the soldiers if they saw that you were doing things for them, and it would give them places in which to hide from air attacks. These things are not difficult to do and they need to be done. Barbed wire entanglements charged with electricity, the mining of bridges and roads, the creation of underground artillery nests – all these and many other measures can be undertaken.

  Fischer went on to point out that Largo was being criticized for not talking to the population, that they had lost confidence in him and in his military adviser, the recently promoted General José Asensio Torrado. He also asked why, with the long lines of communication of the African columns, no effort had been made to launch a guerrilla war in their rear.

  Later on the same day, Fischer was summoned to the prime minister’s office. A pained Largo Caballero told him that he had sent to Barcelona for shovels two months earlier and had tried to buy barbed wire in France. The excuses were feeble and were followed by the even more defeatist remark: ‘As to the building operations in Madrid, you try to deal with our trade union. Their representatives were here this afternoon. They came to make demands on me.’ This from the man who had been put in charge of the government precisely because of his influence over the labour movement. His principal concerns seemed to be, as it had been since 1917, that the CNT might derive some advantage to the detriment of the UGT or, even worse, that he might lose popularity and his reputation as the hero of the unions. Apparently oblivious to the different priorities imposed by the war, Largo Caballero whinged on: ‘If the Socialist trade unions obey the government, the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the CNT, will conduct propaganda against the Socialists and try to attract their members.’ He ended miserably, quoting Fischer’s letter back at him: ‘Maybe you are right, perhaps “people in Madrid have already lost confidence” in me. Let them choose somebody else in my place.’ At that point, Del Vayo kicked Fischer under the table and said: ‘He is very sad. Cheer him up.’ Fischer said: ‘I do not think the whole country has lost confidence in you. On the contrary, there is a feeling that you are the only man for the job. But the people are not conscious of your leadership. Nobody tells them what is happening. They have a feeling that the newspapers and official communiqués lie to them. You have not made a speech to the nation since you have been in office.’ Barely able to rouse himself out of his depressive torpor, Caballero’s reply was equally defeatist. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I haven’t. I am too busy. My room is always full of people who want to see me. There are other orators and better ones. Let Del Vayo make speeches.’ Fischer pleaded with him to take fifteen minutes to speak on the radio, but the prime minister simply shook his head.47

  The tone of Fischer’s diary certainly sustains his later assertions that, for all his sympathy with the Soviet experiment, he was never a Communist Party member. In 1949, responding under oath to an investigation by the US Immigration Service (in search of information about a person named Mills or Milgrom), Fischer declared:

  After I arrived in Spain I covered the front news and political news of the government – just the ordinary work the correspondent does – and I became very sympathetic to their cause because I felt that if Fascism was defeated in Spain, it would not only be a victory for Democracy and a defeat for Hitler and Mussolini who were already intervening there, but also that a victory for Democracy in Spain was the best way of preventing the Second World War which some of us already saw coming at that time.

  When asked if he had ever been a member of any Communist party anywhere in the world, Fischer replied categorically ‘Never’. ‘In general, I am not a “joiner”, even with all the political contacts that I have now and had years back. I don’t think that I was a member of any so-called front organization. If I were I would have no hesitation to say so, because I even had sympathies, up to 1939, with some of these so-called front organizations.’ When asked why, he replied: ‘Because many of them were more or less anti-Fascist. They were doing things which I then thought would prevent the war, would bring victory over Fascism and would strengthen Democracy in various parts of the world.’48

  Certainly, there could be no mistaking his sympathies:

  If 200 superior officers of the army had been arrested six months ago in one unexpected swoop, Spain might have been spared the 80,000 men and women, who, it is roughly estimated, have died in the last ten weeks of civil war. Azaña, however, pure-minded intellectual that he is, preferred partial action to drastic action. His land reform alarmed the landlords without seriously weakening them. His delicate transfer of some generals from Madrid to distant posts warned them of possible events to come and told them to prepare for revolt. The coincidence of the semi-feudal class’s fear for its property with the militarists’ fear for their positions as protectors of the classes from which they spring explains the present rising against constituted authority. Pedants may split hairs about the legality of the situation; the reality is that the landlords, generals, fascists, and their allies are making a last effort to curb the popular revolution which started when Alfonso was driven out. It is a revolution against widespread poverty, for human rights, for progress.49

  This was the same article which, because of its brutally realistic account of the disorganization and panic of untrained militiamen outside Toledo, earned him the virulent criticism of Mikhail Koltsov. He had argued then that his obligation to his readers was to report the facts: Koltsov, however, made it brutally clear that he believed that there were higher values than the truth. In his own diary, for instance, Koltsov played down the presence of Russian arms and advisers because he knew that this was something that was being used against the Republic. This was not a point of view shared by Fischer. In one of his articles about the International Brigades, he referred to asking the men in one unit about their machine-gun: ‘The reply was “Mexican”, but the characters on the gun were Russian. “Mexican” is a formula, and the word is never pronounced without a wink. I prefer my facts straight.’50

  Fischer believed the Spanish war to be crucial to world peace and democratic freedoms: ‘I had so much sympathy with the Loyalist cause that I felt it wasn’t enough just to write about it. I wanted to do something more concrete so I enlisted in the International Brigades.’51 He joined after leaving Madrid on 7 November and recalled later: ‘I am as proud of that as I am of anything I have done in my life. A nation was bleeding. Machine guns were being mounted on the ivory tower. It was not enough to write.’ He was briefly their quartermaster, staying for about two months, although never wore any uniform oth
er than a corduroy jacket and trousers and never carried a weapon. His job was to organize food, clothing and equipment for the brigades. According to Martínez Amutio’s fevered imagination, Fischer was Moscow’s paymaster for the brigades. This was nonsense not least because Fischer’s relationship with the brigades was short-lived. It came to an unhappy end when he clashed with André Marty, the paranoid and fiercely authoritarian Stalinist who really was Moscow’s controller of the Internationals. Marty was fiercely jealous because Fischer spoke such good Russian and had good relations with senior Soviet advisers. He bitterly resented Fischer’s open criticism of his dictatorial ways. Fischer claimed later that their conflict was inevitable ‘perhaps, because I am an independent character but, chiefly, probably because I was not a Communist and couldn’t be ordered around as he liked to order around all people, I felt that I wasn’t wanted there. I sort of stuck out like a sore thumb and so it was just a friendly understanding that I should quit the Brigade.’ Fischer himself implies that Marty manoeuvred to have him replaced. That would have been unusually subtle on Marty’s part given his notoriously authoritarian tendencies and his readiness to dish out the most brutal punishments for the slightest infringements of his arbitrarily imposed discipline. On the other hand, given Fischer’s connections with Rosenberg and Gorev, with Orlov and Koltsov, with Álvarez del Vayo, Negrín and Largo Caballero, Marty must have felt the need to operate more circumspectly than usual. Moreover, it is also possible that the Comintern judged, and instructed Marty, that the fellow-travelling Fischer could be of more use elsewhere.52

  In this regard, it may well be of some significance that, in his diary, Fischer says that he brought with him from Paris ‘a note of recommendation from “M”’ which secured him a room at the Hotel Florida. It is probable that ‘M’ was Willi Münzenberg, the Comintern propaganda wizard who lived in Paris. Certainly, according to Münzenberg’s wife, Babette Gross, Willi and Fischer were ‘on friendly terms’.53 He was similarly acquainted with Münzenberg’s deputy, Otto Katz. Indeed, according to letters intercepted by British Intelligence, he would soon be liaising with Katz about getting the Republic’s case put forward as widely as possible in England and America.54 It is impossible to reconstruct exactly the sequence of events as to who put whom in contact with whom, but it is indisputably the case that, very shortly after his arrival in Madrid, Fischer was in touch with his old friend Julio Álvarez del Vayo, the Socialist journalist who on 4 September had become Foreign Minister in the government of Francisco Largo Caballero. One of Álvarez del Vayo’s first priorities was to reverse the non-intervention policies of the democracies by getting the Republic’s case before an international audience. It is hardly surprising that he should turn to Fischer for help in organizing the press and propaganda services of the Republic, nor indeed that Münzenberg and Katz should have wanted to encourage Fischer to help in this task.