We Saw Spain Die
Page 54
55 Koch, The Breaking Point, pp. 175–7, 191–8.
56 Dos Passos, Century’s Ebb, p. 96. For an entirely invented account of their meeting, see Koch, The Breaking Point, pp. 200–4.
57 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 365; Bowler to Wintringham, 22 June 1937, Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Recent Historical Documents, Moscow, Fond. 545, Opus 6, 216 (copy held by International Brigades Memorial Trust, London).
58 Koch, The Breaking Point, p. 176. On his return to Spain, he published ‘What Happened in Barcelona’; ‘A Spanish Incident’; ‘Stalinist “Cheka” Method in Spain Destroys Unity of Anti-Fascist Struggle’ (with Sam Baron); ‘The Tragic Death of Nin is a Result of the Policy of Spanish Communists’ (with Sam Baron), Socialist Call, 5 June, 3 July, 14 August, 11 September 1937, and ‘Balance Sheet of the Spanish Revolution’, Socialist Review, September 1937; Trotsky, ‘Stalinism and Bolshevism’, reprinted in Living Marxism (no. 18, April 1990); ‘Their Morals and Ours’, The New International, vol. IV, no. 6, June 1938.
59 Oak, ‘I am Exposed as a Spy’, Socialist Call, 18 December 1937.
60 Ludington, Dos Passos, p. 374; Dos Passos, Century’s Ebb, pp. 98–9.
61 Coindreau to Lancaster, 28 May 1937, Robles Papers, Ms 47.
62 Coindreau to Lancaster, 28 May 1937; Márgara to Esther Crooks, 5, 23 August 1937, Robles Papers, Ms 47.
63 Márgara to Esther Crooks, 6 June, Márgara to Lancaster, 24 July 1937, Robles Papers, Ms 47.
64 De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, pp. 295–6.
65 Martínez de Pisón, Enterrar a los muertos, pp. 166–79; Fischer, Men and Politics, pp. 406–7; De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, p. 296; Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 420; Herbst to Bliven, 30 June 1939, Za Herbst Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
66 For an analysis of the dismissal and a facsimile of Porter’s FBI testimony, see Langor, Josephine Herbst, pp. 248–59.
67 Ludington, Dos Passos, pp. 378–84.
68 Dos Passos, Journeys Between Wars, pp. 359–60, 378.
69 Hemingway to Dos Passos, both undated, Ernest Hemingway Papers, Outgoing Correspondence, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
70 Ludington, Dos Passos, p. 374.
71 Malcolm Cowley, ‘Disillusionment’, New Republic, 14 June 1939; Dos Passos to Macdonald and letter to New Republic, both July 1939, The Fourteenth Chronicle, pp. 526–9; Cowley to Elinor Langer, 13 April 1976, Za Herbst Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
72 Dos Passos, The Theme, pp. 128, 130.
73 Dos Passos, Century’s Ebb, pp. 74–7.
74 The Dos Passos remark was made to José Nieto. It is difficult to corroborate this. The Gustav Regler remark in Herbst to Watson, 25 July 1967, Za Herbst Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
Chapter 4: Love and Politics
1 Constancia de la Mora, In Place of Splendor. The Autobiography of a Spanish Woman (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), pp. 241–53, 279–80; Louis Fischer, Men and Politics. An Autobiography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1941), pp. 306, 432; Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros, Cambio de Rumbo, 2 vols (Bucharest: Colección Ebro, 1964, 1970), II, p. 212; Soledad Fox, Constancia de la Mora in War and Exile. International Voice for the Spanish Republic (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2007), pp. 11–13.
2 De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, pp. 281–3.
3 De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, pp. 279–81; Jan Kurzke and Kate Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’ (Jan Kurzke Papers, Archives of the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam), p. 261; John Dos Passos, Journeys Between Wars (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938), p. 357.
4 Arturo Barea, The Forging of a Rebel (London: Davis-Paynter, 1972), pp. 673–4, 684.
5 Vincent Sheean, Not Peace but a Sword (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939), pp. 147–8.
6 Joseph North, No Men are Strangers (New York: International Publishers, 1958), pp. 129–32.
7 Fischer, Men and Politics, pp. 432–6; Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 539–40.
8 De la Mora, In Place of Splendour, pp. 339–40.
9 Fischer to Negrín, 9 November 1937, Fischer Papers, Series 1 General Correspondence, Box 10, Folder 29.
10 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 414.
11 Mangan to Bennett, 7 November 1937, Milly Bennett Papers, Box 3, Folder 18, Hoover Institution Archives.
12 Fischer notes on ‘October 1937 Benicasim visit with Negrín’; Fischer to Negrín, 7 October 1937, Fischer Papers, Series 1 General Correspondence, Box 10, Folder 29.
13 Fischer to Negrín, 9 November 1937, Fischer Papers, Series 1 General Correspondence, Box 10, Folder 29.
14 Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1941), p. 17.
15 De la Mora, In Place of Splendour, pp. 290–1; Sefton Delmer, Trail Sinister. An Autobiography (London: Secker & Warburg, 1961), p. 328.
16 Delmer, Trail Sinister, p. 259.
17 Author’s conversation with Sir Geoffrey Cox, 9 September 2006.
18 Author’s conversation with Sam Russell, 9 September 2006.
19 De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, pp. 287–8.
20 De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, p. 289.
21 Louis Fischer, Men and Politics, p. 432; Philip Jordan, There is No Return (London: Cresset Press, 1938), pp. 287–8.
22 Viscount Churchill, All My Sins Remembered (London: William Heinemann, 1964), pp. 170–1.
23 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 414, 419.
24 Jordan, There is No Return, p. 18.
25 Stephen Spender, World within World (London: Readers Union, 1953), p. 197.
26 E. O. Deeble, ‘In Valencia. December Scene’, Washington Post, 4 January 1937.
27 Jordan, There is No Return, pp. 18–19.
28 Sheean, Not Peace, pp. 140–1.
29 I am indebted to Charlotte Kurzke for information about her mother.
30 Jan Kurzke and Kate Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’ (unpublished ms, Jan Kurzke Papers, Archives of the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam), pp. 81, 88, 228–9, 275 and notes by Charlotte Kurzke, p. x. On Kate’s relations with Slater, Mangan to Bennett, 13 February 1938, Milly Bennett Papers, Box 3, Folder 18, Hoover Institution Archives.
31 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 92, 228–9. That ‘Louise Mallory’ was Kitty is evident from the manuscript by Louis Fischer, ‘Oct. 1937 Benicasim Visit with Negrín’, Fischer Papers, Series 1 General Correspondence, Box 10, Folder 29. See also Hugh Purcell, The Last English Revolutionary. A Biography of Tom Wintringham 1898–1949 (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2004), p. 97.
32 Clipping from Old Colony Memorial, 25 August 1937, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London, Wintringham Collection, Spanish Civil War (henceforth LHCMA, Wintringham papers), folder 10.
33 Duranty to Bowler, 18 February, 10 April 1937, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 10; Bowler to Wintringham, 1 July 1937, Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Recent Historical Documents, Moscow, Fond. 545, Opus 6, 216 (copy held by International Brigades Memorial Trust, London) (henceforth RCPSRHD/IBMT).
34 Bowler to Charlotte Everett Miller Bowler (her mother), 8 September 1936, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, Folder 3; Kitty Bowler, ‘Memoirs’, Chapter 1, pp. 1–4, Chapter 2, pp. 1–3, Chapter 4, pp. 1–7, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, folder 3.
35 Kitty Bowler, ‘Memoirs’, Chapter 5, pp. 6–8, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, folder 3.
36 Wintringham, manuscript ‘An improbable chapter’, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 11.
37 Bowler to Joe Pass (editor of Fight), 26 November Bowler to North, 26 November 1936, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 1. On the Comissariat de Propaganda, see Francesc Poblet, ‘El Comissariat de Propaganda. Un organisme pioneer de la propaganda governamental a l’Estat espanyol’, in Josep Maria Solé i Sabaté, Joan Villarroya
and Eduard Voltes (eds), La Guerra civil a Catalunya, 4 vols (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2004), I, pp. 243–7.
38 Bowler to North, 26 November 1936, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 1; Kitty Bowler, ‘Memoirs’, Chapter 9, p. 5, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, Folder 3.
39 The great majority of her articles were published without a by-line. An exception was Katherine Bowler, ‘The Bombing of the Prado’, Guardian, 30 January 1937.
40 Purcell, Wintringham, p. 110.
41 Sinclair Loutit to David Fernbach, 7 July 1978 (courtesy of David Fernbach); Wintringham to Victor Gollancz, 10 August 1941, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, folder 18. For a slightly different version, see Purcell, Wintringham, p. 114. Wintringham eventually divorced his wife and married Kitty. The British Communist Party demanded that he leave her and he chose instead to leave the party.
42 Margaret Wintringham to Bowler, 15 October 1937, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 10.
43 Purcell, Wintringham, pp. 113–14.
44 Wintringham to Victor Gollancz, 10 August 1941, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, folder 18.
45 Bowler to Charlotte Bowler, 4 December 1936, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 3.
46 Bowler to ‘P’, 12 December 1936; Bowler to Charlotte Bowler, 7 February 1937, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folders 3 and 1; Bowler to Wintringham, 18, 20 December 1936, and a further undated letter which, from internal evidence, seems to have been written on 21 December, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216.
47 Saklatvala Battalion order, ‘Comrade Bowler will be carried on the Battalion strength’, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 12; Wintringham to Victor Gollancz, 10 August 1941, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, folder 18; Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 254–5, 261–3.
48 Bowler, Memoirs, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, folder 3.
49 Wintringham to Victor Gollancz, 10 August 1941, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, folder 18.
50 Wintringham to Fein, 24 February; Kerrigan to Wintringham, 15 March, Wintringham to ‘Shaya’, 7 April 1937, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216; Purcell, Wintringham, pp. 122–4. The fact that the letters were confiscated accounts for their presence in the Wintringham files of the International Brigades archive in Moscow.
51 Author’s interview with Sam Russell, 21 October 2006.
52 Wintringham to Bowler, undated, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 11.
53 Bowler to Wintringham, 27 January 1937, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216.
54 In an effort to have the order rescinded, Wintringham wrote a report taking responsibility for her presence in Madrigueras, ‘Report – Kitty Bowler’, 4 July 1937, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216. See also Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 262–3; Russell interview.
55 Wintringham to Kerrigan, 4 March; Bowler to Kerrigan, 12 March 1937, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216; Patience Edney taped interview, Imperial War Museum, Sound Archive, Spanish Civil War Collection, 8398/13; Purcell, Wintringham, pp. 139–44; Deeble to Bowler, 4 June 1937, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 10; Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 341–3.
56 Harriet Ward, A Man of Small Importance. My Father Griffin Barry (Debenham, Suffolk: Dormouse Books, 2003), p. 180; Purcell, Wintringham, p. 112; Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 413–14.
57 Bowler to Wintringham, 25 June 1937, and attached report sent to Kerrigan, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216.
58 Bowler to Wintringham, 9 July 1937, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216.
59 Wintringham to Victor Gollancz, 10 August 1941, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, 1, folder 18.
60 Bowler to Wintringham, 8 February, ‘Had a nice long letter from Kate’, 28 June 1937, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216; Kurzke & Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 397–8, 408.
61 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 230–1, 244. On Kitty, Mangan to Bennett, undated, but mid-1938, Milly Bennet Papers, Box 3, Folder 18, Hoover Institution Archives.
62 Wintringham to Bowler, 2 November 1936, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 11; Bowler to Wintringham, 27 January 1937, RCPSRHD/IBMT, F.545, O.6/216.
63 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 244–5, 292.
64 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 364. Ironically, Kate’s estranged husband, Sherry Mangan, was himself a prominent Trotskyist and he wrote about the POUM in 1939: see The Spanish Civil War: The View from the Left, Special Issue of Revolutionary History, vol. 4, nos 1/2, 1991, pp. 303–13.
65 Stephen Koch, The Breaking Point. Hemingway, Dos Passos and the Murder of José Robles (New York: Counterpoint, 2005), pp. 115–18; Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 245.
66 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 247; De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, pp. 295–6.
67 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 248.
68 Kate Mangan to Sherry Mangan, 16 April 1937, papers of Charlotte Kurzke.
69 Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p.36; Lucy Viedma, ‘Everything you have done for us Spanish children’, The World in the Basement (Stockholm: Arbetarrörelsens Arkiv och Bibliotek, 2003) p. 37; ‘Kajsa kämpade för Spaniens barn’ in Varmlands Folkblad, 27 November 2004.
70 On Fernanda Jacobsen’s activities, see C. E. Lucas Phillips, The Spanish Pimpernel (London: Heinemann, 1960), pp. 85–8, 104–17; Delmer, Trail Sinister, pp. 344–6; Salter, Try-Out in Spain, pp. 117–33. The security report is ‘Informe sobre la actuación de la Delegación Canadiense en España: Antecedentes de Kajsa’, in Mackenzie-Papineau Collection, Nacional Archives, Canada. I am deeply grateful to Larry Hannant who sent me a copy of this document.
71 Hazen Size to Bethune, 25 February 1937, Osler Medical History Library, McGill University; Moller to Hedda Hopper, 28 January 1943, UCLA Library, Special Collections, Collection 877, Box 30, Folder 1. Kenneth Macgowan Papers. I am grateful to David Lethbridge who sent me copies of both documents. See also Larry Hannant (ed.), The Politics of Passion. Norman Bethune’s Writing and Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 125–7, 361–4 (where there is an English translation of the ‘Informe’); T. C. Worsley, Behind the Battle (London: Robert Hale, 1939), pp. 247–8.
72 Kurzke & Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 339. Josephine Herbst, unpublished diary, Za Herbst Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, pp. 11, 13, 27, 39, 42, 46–7; Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 36.
73 Moller to Hopper, quoted above; Félix Schlayer, Diplomático en el Madrid rojo (Sevilla: Espuela de Plata, 2008), pp. 248–53. On Kajsa after leaving the press office, see Viedma, ‘Everything’, p. 37; ‘Kajsa åter i Spanien’, Solidaritet, no. 1, 1938; ‘Kajsa kämpade för Spaniens barn’ in Varmlands Folkblad, 27 November 2004.
74 On Anna Louise Strong, see Marion Merriman and Warren Lerude, American Commander in Spain: Robert Hale Merriman and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1986), pp. 40–1. Milly’s movements can be traced from the various letters of recommendation and safe-conducts preserved among her papers in the Hoover Institution Archives.
75 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 246–8; Peter N. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 74, 92, 157; Merriman and Lerude, American Commander, pp. 40–2, 53–7, 75, 79, 145, 151, 167; A. Tom Grunfeld, letter to The Volunteer, December 2004; James M. Minifie, Expatriate (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1976), p. 69; Delmer, Trail Sinister, pp. 332–3.
76 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 250, 344–9.
77 H. Edward Knoblaugh, Correspondent in Spain (London and New York: Sheed & Ward, 1937), pp. 176–8.
78 Knoblaugh to Bennett, 7 November 1939, Milly Bennett Papers, Box 3, Folder 7, Hoover Institution Archives.
79 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 309–10.
80 The Times, 17, 24 February, 3 March 1937; T. C. Worsley, Behind the Battle (London: Robert Hale, 1939), pp. 275–7.
81 Deeble to Bowler, 4 June 1937, LHCMA, Wintringham papers, folder 11.
&n
bsp; 82 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 259–61.
83 Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, p. 364.
84 There exist three versions of the demise of Basil Murray, of which only that by Kate Mangan is entirely reliable. Kurzke and Mangan, ‘The Good Comrade’, pp. 349–54; Delmer, Trail Sinister, pp. 337–43; Claud Cockburn, ‘Spies and Two Deaths in Spain’, Grand Street, no. 2, 1981.
85 Articles by Matthews, New York Times, 20, 26 December 1937, 5, 9, 11, 16, 28, 31 January, 4, 6 February 1938; by William P. Carney, New York Times, 31 December 1937, 18, 22, 23 January, 8, 23 February 1938; Herbert L. Matthews, A World in Revolution. A Newspaperman’s Memoir (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), pp. 28–30.
86 Ernest Hemingway to ‘Madug’, undated January 1938, Louis Henry and Marguerite Cohn Hemingway Collection, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library. Herbert L. Matthews, Two Wars and More to Come (New York: Carrick & Evans, 1938), jacket copy.
87 Salter, Try-out in Spain, pp. 227–30.
88 The story of Jim Lardner is movingly recounted by Sheean, Not Peace, pp. 235–66.
89 Sheean, Not Peace, pp. 141–2, 240–2.
90 Salter, Try-out in Spain, pp. 182–3.
91 Josephine Herbst, unpublished memoir, ‘Journal Spain’, Za Herbst Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, pp. 8, 11; De la Mora, In Place of Splendor, p. 293. On Kajsa, Cowles, Looking for Trouble, p. 36.
92 Bernard Knox, Essays Ancient and Modern (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 248.
93 Salter, Try-out in Spain, p. 210.
94 North, No Men are Strangers, p. 142.
95 Peter Besas, ‘Henry Buckley, Reporter and 40-year Veteran of Madrid’, Guidepost, 1970, pp. 17–18; Herbert L. Matthews, The Education of a Correspondent (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946), p. 138; Sheean, Not Peace, pp. 336–7.