Forged in Spain
This book relates the biographies of 13 British men and women who volunteered to serve in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1938. The majority of the protagonists were members of the Communist Party and went into the International Brigade of the Republican government’s army, although one, Stafford Cottman, belonged to the Independent Labour Party and joined the Trotskyist POUM movement, whose harsh suppression was described in Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. One chapter focuses on Peter Kemp, a conservative anti-Communist who, almost uniquely, chose to fight for Franco’s Nationalist rebels.
The book describes their later careers during World War 2 and afterwards – in most cases those who had served in Spain were overlooked for promotion when serving in the British Army. They were under regular surveillance by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, though none of the people in the book was a really effective agent for Soviet Russia.
Baxell has researched his book with immense thoroughness, even accessing records in the Russian State Archives. I noticed some slight inaccuracies purely due to editing errors. For example, reference is made to a member of ‘Her Majesty’s Parliament’, at a point during the 1940s when George VI was on the throne. It is interesting to read that one of the victims of the 1952 purge of Czech communists, Otto Katz, was the model for Victor Laszlo in the film Casablanca, but this character was in fact played by Paul Henreid, not Humphrey Bogart as stated.
Always holding its main protagonists in clear focus amidst the complex narratives, this book remains an extremely readable trawl through some fascinating byways of history. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in the war and those who fought it, but also for those studying the politics of the Left in the mid-20th century.
