Resources
Online Lessons
Introduction to the Spanish Civil War
By: Richard Baxell
"It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and
yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when
courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains
why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal
tragedy."
- Albert Camus.
The Spanish Civil War: U.S. Foreign Policy Between the World Wars
By: Peter N. Carroll and David Christiano, April, 1995. Revised April 2009.
I came to Spain because I felt I had to. Look at the world situation. We didn’t worry when Mussolini came to power in Italy. We felt bad when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, but what could we do? We felt...that it was their problem and wouldn’t affect us. Then the fascist governments sent out agents and began to gain power in other countries. Remember the anti-Semitic troubles in Austria only about a year ago. Look at what is happening in Poland...
Hyman Katz, November 25, 1937
Jewish Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War
By: Peter N. Carroll, Fraser M. Ottanelli & Rajel Ibañes Sperber
"I have no time to recall for you my life, but I know that it has been hard and beautiful"
- From the last letter of Leon Pakin, one of the founders of the Jewish Botwin company, before being executed by the Nazis in Paris in 1942.
African Americans in the Spanish Civil War
By: William Loren Katz,Fraser M. Ottanelli, Christopher Brooks
"Why I, a Negro, who have fought through these years for the rights of my people, am here in Spain today? Because if we crush Fascism here, [we] will build us a new society--a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim-crow trains, no lynchings. That is why, my dear, I am here in Spain."
- Canute Frankson to my dear friend, Albacete, Spain, July 6, 193
Spanish Civil War Posters
By: Cary Nelson
"Barcelona beautiful. Streets aflame with posters of all parties for all causes, some of them put out by combinations of parties."
- Robert Merriman
They Still Draw Pictures
By: Anthony L. Geist, Peter N. Carroll
"It was amazing to see how many of these children could draw and draw well - and it was heartening to see how their talent was encouraged by the teachers."
- Dorothy Parker (November 15, 1937)
World War II Letters from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
By: Melvin Small
"We who fought the Fascist Axis in Spain proudly volunteer to march shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans for the final crushing of this menace to the independence and democracy of America and all peoples."
- Milt Wolff to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941
Excerpts from The Good Fight Continues: Word War II Letters from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Peter N. Carroll, Michael Nash, and Melvin Small (eds.), (New York: NYU Press, Fall, 2006)
