Spanish Antifascists in the Resistance
France 1939-46
by
Steve Cushion
There were many different nationalities of antifascists fighting the Nazis and their French collaborators in occupied France. The largest group were the Spanish refugees who had fled to France following the defeat of the Republic by the Nationalist forces led by Francisco Franco. Ten thousand Spanish Republicans fought in their own guerrilla brigades, many thousands more volunteered for mixed groupings of the various units of the French Resistance, others joined the Free French army in exile or the Foreign Legion. The first unit of General Leclerc’s armoured division to enter Paris, was composed of Spanish Republican veterans.
Much celebrated in the localities where they fought, these foreign fighters did not fit into the post-war ideological reconstruction. They were written out of history.
The desire of many Guerrilleros to go back over the Pyrenees and start an uprising against the dictatorship did not fit in with the plans of US, British and French governments, who saw Franco’s Spain as a potential anticommunist ally against the Soviet Union. As so often happens, yesterday’s heroes become tomorrow’s terrorists.
Aside from honouring the memory of some forgotten working class heroes, their willingness to lay their sectarian differences to one side in a common struggle against fascism provide an example that the workers’ movement today could profitably emulate.