The International Group () was a detachment of foreign volunteers that fought in the Spanish Civil War as part of the Durruti Column. First established by French anarchists who had gone to fight on the Aragon front in August 1936, it grew to include members from throughout Europe and North America, with groupings being formed out of French and German fighters. The group was almost whiped out in the Battle of Perdiguera in October 1936, during which its commander Louis Berthomieu was killed. It was then transferred to the Madrid front and later back to the Aragon front, where it underwent militarisation.
Its members consisted of a mix of people from various different left-wing factions, who disagreed on how the militarisation process ought to take place. Despite objections, it was ultimately reorganised into the International Company of the Spanish Republican Army's 26th Division and later renamed to the International Workers' Association Battalion. When the group refused to take part in an offensive against Quinto, it was disbanded and its members transferred to the International Brigades. Many of its members later took part in the resistance to Nazi Germany in World War II.
Background During the 1930s, anti-fascism had developed into an international and transnational movement. The outbreak of the Spanish Revolution of 1936, which saw the collectivisation of the economy and formation of revolutionary militias to fight against the Nationalists in the burgeoning civil war, galvanised the previously stagnant international anarchist movement. New groups formed to promote solidarity with the Spanish revolutionaries, while some went to Spain themselves to work for the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) or volunteer for the militias. Roughly 35,000 foreign supporters volunteered to fight for the Republicans, with most joining the communist International Brigades, while a significant minority enlisted in the anarchist confederal militias. Between 1,000 and 3,000 foreign anarchists went to Revolutionary Catalonia to volunteer as fighters. According to historian Robert J. Alexander, the role of these foreign anarchist volunteers in the war has been "disproportionately neglected" in popular historiography of the war.
Establishment On 23 July, the first Catalan militia column, the Durruti Column, led by the anarchist revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti, left Barcelona for the Aragon front. The Column had been organised along anarcho-syndicalist lines, without bureaucracy or a traditional military hierarchy, which artillery colonel Ricardo Jiménez de la Beraza described as a form of "chaos that works". As it captured territory in Aragon, the Column executed local political bosses, priests and other right-wing sympathisers, burned property registers, encouraged the collectivisation of land and even abolished money in some areas. According to Swiss communist volunteer Edi Gmür, the anarchists preferred to execute their enemies rather than take them captive, in accordance with their ideas on prison abolition. However, a shortage of arms and ammunition prevented the Column from marching against the Aragonese capital of Zaragoza, which led to the militias' offensive stalling.
Soon after the revolution began, foreign anarchists began volunteering for the militias; they crossed the border at Puigcerdá, then went on to Barcelona, before being transferred to the Aragon front. Many of them were attracted to the Durruti Column, as Durruti had gained international fame for his campaign of bank robberies in Latin America and his attempted assassination of Alfonso XIII in Paris. Charles Ridel and Charles Carpentier, both members of the Francophone , joined up with the Durruti Column in Fraga. Another early volunteer was Émile Cottin, an anarchist militant who had attempted to assassinate French prime minister Georges Clemenceau. Within the column, these French fighters became known as the "black berets", in reference to their headwear. By August 1936, they had established the Durruti Column's International Group, which initially consisted of 29 French volunteers, including two women and two underage boys. Soon after its formation, the International Group fought in the Battle of Pina de Ebro.
Within two months, the International Group had grown to 50 people of various nationalities, with its French and Italian militiamen going on to form the Sébastien Faure centuria. International groups were also established in the Ascaso Column and Ortiz Column, although foreign anarchists played a less prominent role in these other units. The International Group functioned as an autonomous detachment of the Column. The International Group was valourised by the French anarchist newspapers and Le Libertaire, and praised for its bravery by the Durruti Column's own newspaper El Frente.
Recruitment Most of the International Group's volunteers came to Spain during the early months of the war, at a time when the anarchist militias had the most prestige of the Republican units and when the Durruti Column specifically was known for being a "tough outfit". The International Group's recruitment efforts were informal and decentralised, in contrast with the institutionalised recruitment procedures of the International Brigades. Some foreign volunteers, such as the Italian-American Carl Marzani, served in the Durruti Column but did not join its International Group. Volunteers were processed by a revolutionary committee in Northern Catalonia. The CNT was less active in recruiting foreign volunteers than the Communist International, instead pressing for foreign sympathisers to campaign against non-intervention and for arming the Republicans. But they received so many volunteers that, by September 1936, the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias of Catalonia (CCMA) was publicly requesting that anarchists stop volunteering as combatants and non-combatants, and began turning people away. Durruti himself complained in a letter to Le Libertaire about "tourists" who had expected special treatment from the Spanish and resisted discipline after volunteering for the militias; he urged sympathisers to instead to propaganda work in their own countries, which he believed they would be more useful to them. Following the battle of Madrid in November 1936, most foreign volunteers who arrived in Spain joined the International Brigades instead of the anarchist militias. The French government also began cracking down on the passage of foreign volunteers through Northern Catalonia, with anarchists reporting that the department effectively turned into a police state
Composition Between 240 and 400 foreign volunteers served in the International Group of the Durruti Column. From primary sources and the records of the International Institute of Social History and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, historian Morris Brodie identified 368 individual fighters from 25 different countries who had served at one time or another. Most of the volunteers were workers and only few had military experience; sailors were one of the most common professions in the International Group, followed by other skilled and unskilled workers. Only 7 volunteers had a prior military career. Most of the volunteers did not speak Spanish on arrival, but quickly became acquainted with Spanish revolutionary slogans.
Command The unit followed an ad hoc system of "revolutionary discipline", in which their commander's orders were either confirmed or rejected by a vote. The group's commanders were elected based on their military experience, rather than because of any previous posts or their ideological tendency, and were mostly veterans of World War I. The International Group's first elected delegate and de facto commander was the French artillery captain Louis Berthomieu, a military officer who said he "knew nothing" about politics. After Berthomieu was killed in action, he was succeeded as delegate of the International Group by the anarchist activist Mohamed Saïl. Others with a military background, including the French Alexis Cardeur, Italian Pietro Vagliasindi and Germans Christian Lamotte and Carl Einstein also served in leadership positions in the group. Willi Schroth, who had been a member of the French Foreign Legion and later joined the XIII International Brigade, was denigrated as a "politically unreliable" and "undisciplined" mercenary by communist officials.
National groupings The International Group was officially composed of five groups of fifty people, but in practice it was split into two main groupings. The first was the French-speaking centuria, named after Sébastien Faure. Established by Le Libertaire in September 1936, it primarily brought together French-speaking anarchists and Italian anarchists, as well as a number of people from other countries. It came to include 120 volunteers from France, 3 from Belgium and 17 from Italy. The first elected delegate of the Sébastien Faure centuria was Georges Monnard, who was succeeded later by Jean Martin. In October 1936, Sébastien Faure himself visited the Durruti Column in Bujaraloz. Many of its members were affiliated with the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) or the Revolutionary Syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT-SR).
In late October 1936, 18 German volunteers led by the Trotskyist quit the in protest after Hans Beimler had ordered the replacement of their elected political commissar with a Stalinist appointee, and joined up with the Durruti Column. They formed a German-speaking centuria, possibly named after Erich Mühsam, which came to consist of at least 85 fighters from Germany, 14 from Switzerland and 5 each from Austria and Sweden. The German volunteers largely consisted of refugees who had fled Nazi Germany, some having escaped concentration camps, and found asylum in the Spanish Republic or the other democratic states of Europe. Some of them were anarcho-syndicalists of the Free Workers' Union of Germany (FAUD) and others were former members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD); the latter accounted for 40% of the German volunteers. 11 of the German volunteers were sailors affiliated with the International Transport Workers' Federation or International Union of Seamen and Harbour Workers. Four of the volunteers affiliated themselves with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), one of whom had been a member of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD), and several others affiliated with the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). Another two German volunteers defected from the International Brigades after being broken out of a Communist prison by an anarchist commando.
The unit had three smaller sections made up of other nationalities, in which "half a dozen" different languages were spoken. These included 5 each from Bulgaria and the Netherlands, 4 from the United States, 2 each from Canada, England and the Soviet Union, and 1 each from Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Lithuania and Portugal. There were also an unidentified number from Hungary, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. According to Abel Paz, there were also some Moroccans in the group. 47 Spanish fighters were also added to the International Group, either to fill out some of its smaller units or because they had been in exile from Spain and joined up with comrades they had met abroad. There was an additional centuria named after Sacco and Vanzetti; although some sources claim it was an American unit, historian Kenyon Zimmer disputes that it had a chiefly American composition, as there were only a few Americans in the Column. Some were affiliated with the North American Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
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