The day after Christmas 1936 hundreds of American volunteers set sail for Spain, joining the international fight to save the country from fascism.

83 years ago today, just as Santa and his reindeer closed the book on Christmas 1936, another intrepid band was setting out on a global voyage of their own.

A few hundred brave men were sailing from New York, across the Atlantic, to Spain.

Among them were all manner of American citizens: industrial workers, students, and veterans; African Americans, Jewish Americans and Irish Americans; socialists, communists and liberals.

This motley crew had been brought together by a single purpose – to save the Spanish Republic and its democracy from the fascist coup of General Francisco Franco.

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Americans join the fight for Spanish democracy 

When the first Americans set sail for Spain, Franco had the Spanish Republic on the ropes.

Madrid was vulnerable and much of the west of the country had already fallen to his hordes, who were pillaging towns and murdering tens of thousands of progressive Spaniards as they went.

In these dire straits, the men and women fighting to defend Spanish democracy appealed to the freedom-loving people of the word: come to Spain and take up arms to help us save our liberty.

This was the call which the men who’d become the "Abraham Lincoln Battalion" chose to answer.

As one of the American volunteers, Bill Bailey, wrote home from the Front:

“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.”

After hasty training at their new base in Albacete, the Abraham Lincoln Battalion faced its baptism by fire.

Franco had launched a new offensive in the Jarama Valley to try to cut off Madrid from the rest of Republican Spain.

40,000 fascist troops were thrown at the Republic’s defenders.

Many Americans gave their lives resisting the onslaught – on 27th February alone, 113 of them were killed in battle. One volunteer joked morbidly that the battalion “was named after Abraham Lincoln because he, too, was assassinated.”

But they held the line. Franco did not pass.

Click to see our 'Help Spain' tea towel - based on a vintage 1930s poster

International Brigades with an international reputation 

Meanwhile, the heroics of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion were gaining attention back home in the States.

American radicals lauded the volunteers who’d gone to Spain.

Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson sang in their honor. Ernest Hemingway roamed the Spanish battlefields as a sympathetic reporter.

Meanwhile, the ‘Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade’ (the battalion had soon become informally known as a Brigade) was a formidable group in US civil society, working to support the troops in Spain.

Alas, in the end all of this courage and solidarity were not enough.

Franco’s brute force – backed to the hilt by Hitler and Mussolini – was too much for the Spanish Republic, which received no support from any major power apart from the Soviet Union, and collapsed at the end of 1939.

But the Abraham Lincoln Battalion’s sacrifice played a major role in galvanizing Americans against fascism, helping President Roosevelt to break down the country's isolationist fever and eventually bring the US into the fight against Hitler.

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The enduring fight against fascism 

Rarely mentioned on Memorial Day, the hundreds of American soldiers who gave their lives fighting fascism in Spain are worth sparing a warm thought this holiday season.

As one journalist reflected at the time:

“If the world has a future, they have preserved it.”

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