Fighting Fascism (Do You Know This Man?)

[Octafish]

From our friends at CommonDreams.org:



Unidentified black soldier who died in the Spanish civil war Photograph: Agustí Centelles/El País

Spanish authorities are trying to identify this man - one of the first American volunteers to die fighting Franco as part of the famed Abraham Lincoln Brigade during Spain's Civil War. More here.

Spanish quest to identify black soldier who fought against fascism in civil war

• US volunteer in picture killed in civil war battle
• Authorities plan to present image to Obama next year

bu Giles Tremlett in Barcelona
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 December 2009 16.50 GMT

As a volunteer in the International Brigades that fought in Spain's civil war, the unidentified black soldier in the photograph was one of the first Americans to die fighting fascism.

Now Spanish authorities want to put a name to him so they can present his picture to President Barack Obama when he visits Spain next year.

The black and white picture of the African American volunteer forms part of an extraordinary collection of civil war photographs that was bought recently by the Spanish state.

"All we know is that he arrived with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of American volunteers and that he died in the battle at Brunete ," said Sergi Centelles, whose father, Agustí, took the picture.

The soldier is one of more than 90 African-Americans who volunteered to defend Spain's elected Republican government from a 1936 rightwing military uprising that sparked a three-year civil war.

SNIP...

• If you know who the man in the main photograph is, or can provide any information that might help identify him, please contact [email protected]

SOURCE:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/20/spanish-civil-war-black-fighter

Most of us weren't born then, but if you know someone who may know about a brave man who volunteered to fight the fascists, please ask them.

As most DUers know, the work's not done.

[hootinholler]

1. I had no clue about the Lincoln Brigades

Thanks Der Fishie, you always inform!

-Hoot

[Octafish]

2. They fought Hitler and Mussolini back when Wall Street was arming them.

Weird coincidence how there's hardly any mention of the Lincoln Brigades on the tee-vee or in history class at any level.

DUer John Simkin provides excellent background, my Friend:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPlincoln.htm

[starroute]

8. The history got distorted even as it was being made

My mother told me when I was little about how the New York Times always catered to their advertisers by describing those who were fighting to defend the Spanish republic as communists and never mentioned that Franco and his forces were supposed by the fascists.

Thinks don't change much -- and though the Times has had it's moments, it's always been fundamentally on the side of the business interests who pay the bills. And it's that version of events that gets into the history books.

I'd love to see an online archive of original documents describing what was really going on between, say, 1935 and 1945. It could open some eyes.

Even people who think of themselves as leftists tend to have swallowed the center-right version of history uncritically back in grade school and never revisited it -- and I think that's a major reason why the left keeps sabotaging itself. How can you work for progressive change when you believe all the anti-progressive myths?

[Octafish]

12. ''You fought in Spain.''

Histories, like myths, get written by the victors. Ask any Brand Manager: Belief systems, once formed, are very hard to change. For those new to the subject, look at all the money Madison Avenue gets to shape young people's "buying habits." Look at how happy Grover Norquist is at the deaths of the World War II generation.

"You Fought in Spain"

Taps for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

By DON SANTINA
CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
August 16 / 17, 2008

EXCERPT...

“No man ever entered the earth more honorably than those who died in Spain,” Ernest Hemingway proclaimed, but as the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn noted just as accurately, “there were no rewards in Spain. They were fighting for us all, against the combined forces of European fascism. They deserved our thanks and respect, and20they got neither.”

Back home the Lincolns were subjected to years of harassment from their own government. But while they were being blacklisted and hounded out of their jobs during the epoch when Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover were riding roughshod over the Bill of Rights, the veterans stood firm on their political convictions and remained active participants in the battles for peace and justice—demonstrating that same idealist spirit that drew them to the cause of Spain.

Richard Bermack, photographer and author of The Frontlines of Social Change: Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, noted that while doing the book “I realized that you can keep your own ideals, though it’s not an easy thing to do at all. The point of the book is to show that none of them left the struggle.”

SNIP...

At the dedication, Abe Osheroff stated that “the stuff we’re made of never goes away, with or without a monument because the bastards will never cease their evil, and the decent human beings will never stop their struggle.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/santina08162008.html

Thank you, starroute, for sharing what your mother said in regards to Belief, the NYT, the Spanish Civil War and advertising's pernicious influence on editorial content. I, too, would love to see the uncensored archives, but I'd go back a couple of years to 1933. The organized opposition to FDR must've been really something. Thanks for being one of those who continue to care and fight.

[phasma ex machina]

18. +1 "Histories, like myths, get written by the victors." nt

[bleever]

23. "Even people who think of themselves as leftists tend to have swallowed the center-right version

of history uncritically back in grade school and never revisited it -- and I think that's a major reason why the left keeps sabotaging itself. How can you work for progressive change when you believe all the anti-progressive myths?"

I think you make a very important point, very directly.

[Octafish]

6. A letter from Bill Bailey to his mother, explaining why he was fighting in the Spanish Civil War...

(1) Bill Bailey wrote to his mother explaining why he was fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1937)

You see Mom, there are things that one must do in this life that are a little more than just living. In Spain there are thousands of mothers like yourself who never had a fair shake in life. They got together and elected a government that really gave meaning to their life. But a bunch of bullies decided to crush this wonderful thing. That's why I went to Spain, Mom, to help these poor people win this battle, then one day it would be easier for you and the mothers of the future. Don't let anyone mislead you by telling you that all this had something to do with Communism. The Hitlers and Mussolinis of this world are killing Spanish people who don't know the difference between Communism and rheumatism. And it's not to set up some Communist government either. The only thing the Communists did here was show the people how to fight and try to win what is rightfully theirs.

You should be proud that you have a son whose heart, soul and energy were directed toward helping the poor people of the world get back what was taken from them. When the horrible conditions of this world are eventually made right, you can look with pride at those who will be here to enjoy it and say, "My son gave his life to help make things better, and for that I am grateful."

If it will make my departure from the world of the living a little easier for you, just remember this, Mom: I love you dearly and warmly, and there was never a moment when I didn't feel that way. I was always grateful and proud that you were my mom.

SOURCE: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPbailey.htm

[jonnyblitz]

21. I saw a few of the surviving members at the infamous

February 15th 2003 anti-war rally in NYC.

[Octafish]

3. Kick One for the NAZIs still with us.

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

[pleah]

4. K&R

[Octafish]

5. The Buchenwald Touch

It's no mystery who comes up with this scheiß...

Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

Most of them don't speak German.

[Cetacea]

7. Recommend. Thanks Octafish. nt

[Octafish]

9. Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

You're welcome, Cetacea! Thank you for understanding how history makes sense of the present:

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

[asdjrocky]

10. Thank you for this.

It is a wonderful and worthwhile puzzle. This is a great part of history that we don't know enough about, I know I don't know enough about it.

This illustrates so strongly why I still check in to DU.

Thanks again for giving me a new part of history to explore.

[Octafish]

13. Guess who Wall Street backed in Spain?

Hint: The same class of folks they backed in Germany and Italy.

American supporters of the European Fascists

The following is excerpted from a report printed by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1974:

The activities of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler prior to and during World War II...are instructive. At that time, these three firms dominated motor vehicle production in both the United States and Germany. Due to its mass production capabilities, automobile manufacturing is one of the most crucial industries with respect to national defense. As a result, these firms retained the economic and political power to affect the shape of governmental relations both within and between these nations in a manner which maximized corporate global profits. In short, they were private governments unaccountable to the citizens of any country yet possessing tremendous influence over the course of war and peace in the world. The substantial contribution of these firms to the American war effort in terms of tanks, aircraft components, and other military equipment is widely acknowledged. Less well known are the simultaneous contributions of their foreign subsidiaries to the Axis Powers. In sum, they maximized profits by supplying both sides with the materiel needed to conduct the war.

During the 1920's and 1930's, the Big Three automakers undertook an extensive program of multinational expansion...By the mid-1930's, these three American companies owned automotive subsidiaries throughout Europe and the Far East; many of their largest facilities were located in the politically sensitive nations of Germany, Poland, Rumania, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, and Japan...Due to their concentrated economic power over motor vehicle production in both Allied and Axis territories, the Big Three inevitably became major factors in the preparations and progress of the war. In Germany, for example, General Motors and Ford became an integral part of the Nazi war efforts. GM's plants in Germany built thousands of bomber and jet fighter propulsion systems for the Luftwaffe at the same time that its American plants produced aircraft engines for the U.S. Army Air Corps....

Ford was also active in Nazi Germany's prewar preparations. In 1938, for instance, it opened a truck assembly plant in Berlin whose "real purpose," according to U.S. Army Intelligence, was producing "troop transport-type" vehicles for the Wehrmacht. That year Ford's chief executive received the Nazi German Eagle (first class)....

The outbreak of war in September 1939 resulted inevitably in the full conversion by GM and Ford of their Axis plants to the production of military aircraft and trucks.... On the ground, GM and Ford subsidiaries built nearly 90 percent of the armored "mule" 3-ton half-trucks and more than 70 percent of the Reich's medium and heavy-duty trucks. These vehicles, according to American intelligence reports, served as "the backbone of the German Army transportation system."....

After the cessation of hostilities, GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing... Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne...

Due to their multinational dominance of motor vehicle production, GM and Ford became principal suppliers for the forces of fascism as well as for the forces of democracy. It may, of course, be argued that participating in both sides of an international conflict, like the common corporate practice of investing in both political parties before an election, is an appropriate corporate activity. Had the Nazis won, General Motors and Ford would have appeared impeccably Nazi; as Hitler lost, these companies were able to re-emerge impeccably American. In either case, the viability of these corporations and the interests of their respective stockholders would have been preserved.

http://www.corpwatch.org/campaigns/PCD.jsp?articleid=4368

CONTINUED...

http://rationalrevolution.net/war/american_supporters_of_the_europ.htm

And I live in Detroit, the place FDR called "The Arsenal of Democracy."

More importantly: You are most welcome, asdjrocky! Thank you for caring about a danger that still threatens America -- from within and without.

[MSchreader]

11. The best place to start is with the Communist Party USA

Since they organized the Lincoln Brigade. I would guess that the records of the ALB were part of what the CP donated to the Tammiment Library a decade ago, but they would be able to confirm that. The other option, the Comintern archive in Moscow, would have the information, but it would take forever to find it.

[bleever]

14. I forwarded this to the daughter of an Abraham Lincoln Brigade vet that I know.

I mentioned her here a while ago: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bleever/76

[blondeatlast]

16. Wow; please keep us posted; this is history I was unaware of until now.

Thanks.

[Octafish]

27. You have some great -- and cool -- friends!

It is an honor to know that someone who was there, fighting these gangster fascists, might read something I found. Perhaps your friend's grandmom will recognize the gallant American who gave his life for those who believe in democracy, freedom and justice.

Thank you for the heads-up, bleever. I wish I'd seen your OP when it was up-and-running. Those were some days, then -- before the paybacks...

[asdjrocky]

15. This needs a kick because it's interesting.

[Octafish]

28. Imagine what might've been had the Allies opposed Franco?

Perhaps Hitler would never have invaded Austria and, later, Poland?

[blondeatlast]

17. When DU gets its nastiest, there always seems to be something wonderful

like this to redeem it.

Great find--k/r.

[Octafish]

30. Guernica

Here's the reality of the situation, from a woman who survived Guernica:

On Anniversary of 1937 Guernica Bombing, Basque Community in Idaho Looks Back

Seventy-two years ago this Sunday, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, on April 26th, 1937, the Basque town of Guernica was carpet bombed by Fascist Italian and Nazi German forces. Three-quarters of Guernica was destroyed, and as many as 1,600 civilians were killed. Boise, Idaho is home to one of the largest Basque populations in the United States. We speak with a survivor of the Guernica bombing and with the director Basque Museum and Cultural Center in Boise.

DemocracyNow!
April 24, 2009

AMY GOODMAN: What happened in 1937? You were how old at the time?

MARI CARMEN EGURROLA TOTORICA: Five years old.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you remember?

MARI CARMEN EGURROLA TOTORICA: I remember being—earlier in the afternoon, I hear the bell rings. I mean, the church bell rings. And I say to my mother, “What’s going on? This is not a holiday, you know?” But, “No, no, it’s OK. It’s OK.” And the next thing I know, it was herself telling me, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. We have to get out of the house.”

And so, my mother and my eleven-month-old brother, we just run from the house, and we just went through—there is a church, Santa Maria. Behind there, there were some a little bit high hills. And we tried to escape and kind of be somewhere, you know. And we went to the—I don’t know. There is some little chestnut trees, little tiny ones, and we stayed there. And I remember, right from there, then everybody running somewhere and my mother telling me to stay there, to be quiet, to stay there and to pray. And I say, “I already prayed.” “Pray more. You have to pray more.”

And then the planes start coming. And they were, you know, just really close to us, very close to us. And I was kind of scared. Then they started throwing things, and I realized they were—the most scary thing that, I mean, I never forgot this one thing, that I saw people coming towards where we were, like a group of people, and they throw some bombs, and there was a big explosion. You know, I mean, dust and—I say to my mother, “What happened? What happened?” She said, “Don’t worry. Don’t worry.” But, of course, people die right there. And then, the next three hours, we know that I have to be sit and not moving, because they were throwing bombs, you know, really close to us. And that’s the way we were for three hours.

Then after that, we can’t go back to Guernica, because—we can’t go because it was on fire. So we went from there to a little farmhouse. I mean, the closest one, it was like about a mile, this farmhouse, that my mother know the lady because she was delivering us milk every day from that place to my home town. But in the meantime, between time, I mean, when we were going there, walking, there was one body on the floor, another body. And I said, “What’s the matter with them? What happened?” And she said, “Don’t—don’t think about it. Just let’s go. Ignore it.” You know what I mean? But I was five years old, and I see like that. It was dead people.

CONTINUED w/audio link:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/24/on_anniversary_of_1937_guernica_bombing

"Pray more." We must all pray more.

Thank you for the kind words, blondeatlast. I very much appreciate that you care and understand.

[snagglepuss]

19. K & R What a story but how pathetic that its only told now.

This would make a great movie.


:kick:

[leftstreet]

20. K&R

Very interesting!

[Wilms]

22. Wow. n/t

[Octafish]

31. Generalissimo Franco was Big Buds with the Nazi Connection to the John F. Kennedy Assassination

How history unfolds the present...

The Nazi Connection to the John F. Kennedy Assassination

Evidence of link between Nazis still in operation after World War II to the still unsolved murder of John F. Kennedy

by Mae Brussell
(from the short-lived Larry Flynt publication The Rebel, January 1984)

EXCERPT...

"Sir" Charles Willoughby -- a Franco-German-American

He was a bull of a man who spoke with a German accent, wore a custom-tailored general's uniform and affected a monocle. A fellow officer in the U.S. army under his true name of Adolph Charles Weidenbach, born in Heidelberg, March 8, 1892. But by the time he became Douglas MacArthur's chief of intelligence for the war in the Pacific, he was Major General Charles A. Willoughby. Behind his back he was derisively tagged "Sir Charles."

For a man of such Teutonic traits it was odd that Willoughby preferred his fascism with a Spanish accent. But this was an accident of geography. While serving as a military attache in Ecuador, he had received a decoration from Mussolini's government -- the Order of Saints Maurizio and Lazzaro. After delivering an impassioned paean to Spanish dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco at a lunch in Madrid, he was toasted by the secretary general of the Falangist Party, "I am happy to know a fellow Falangist and reactionary.

MacArthur's pre-war headquarters were in the Philippines, whose commerce was dominated by resident Spaniards. The Daddy Warbucks of this crowd was Andres Soriano, who owned an early-day conglomerate of airlines, mines, breweries ("Of course!") and American distributorships. During the Spanish Civil War Soriano was one of Franco's principal money-bags. When the Rising Sun flag was raised over the Philippines Soriano fled to Washington to become finance minister of the government-in-exile. But there was such a fuss over his fascist reputation that he flew off to Australia to become a colonel on MacArthur’s staff.

Willoughby accompanied the Supreme Commander to Tokyo for the occupation of Japan. His preferences remained the same; when military police shook down his hotel looking for a fugitive, they found Willoughby at dinner with the stranded Italian fascist ambassador to Japan and members of his staff. He became a heavy-handed censor, suppressing unfavorable news to the States. He delighted in falsely labeling correspondents who defied him as "Communists," a tactic Senator McCarthy would adopt with enthusiasm. But the general's priority project was a dressed-up history of the Pacific War in which MacArthur would be the towering hero. Willoughby brought in Japanese military brass for a view from the enemy side, a move that may have had an ulterior motive. The possibility existed that Willoughby was down-playing Japanese war crimes so that the perpetrators could be protected for use against the Soviets later. This was happening in Germany where the top nazis were writing the history of Malmedy. The tight security in which Willoughby wrapped the project only adds to this impression. One woman had a passkey, the wife of Dr. Mitsutaro Araki, a former exchange lecturer in Germany, who was closely tied in with high nazis in Tokyo and the Tojo clique.

Willoughby harbored another secret that only came to light last year. During the war, the Japanese conducted germ warfare experiments with human beings as guinea pigs (at least 3,000 died, including an undetermined number of captured U.S. military). The Pentagon decided that the biological research might prove handy against the Russians, and the Japanese responsible for the experiments were granted immunity from prosecution in return for their laboratory records. On December 12, 1947 the Pentagon acknowledged the "wholehearted cooperation" of Willoughby in arranging the examination of the "human pathological material which had been transferred to Japan from the biological warfare installations."

As his final public gesture to Franco, Willoughby lobbied the U.S. Congress in August, 1952 to authorize $100 million for the anti-Communist dictator's needs. Then he settled down in the U.S. to do battle with the domestic enemy. As Sir Charles and his right-wing allies saw it, Marxism wasn't the real enemy, the Liberals were.



http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Nazi%20Connection%20to%20JFK%20Assass.html

Sorry to sound like a broken record, Wilms. It's just the phonograph needle keeps skipping back to the same sorry players, over and over and over again.

[Cleita]

24. K&R

[Solly Mack]

25. K&R

[autorank]

26. k*r Great thread, great honor to this brave man! n/t

[Libertas1776]

29. I hope they find out the identity

of this brave fallen volunteer.

[Blue_Tires]

32. thanks for this!

[Echo In Light]

33. Thanks for posting