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WORLD WAR II Continued from Page 72 Arman’s counterattack — more accurately a raid — had succeeded in raising Republican morale, but it had not stopped the Nationalist’s advance on the Spanish capital. Fearing that the city could not be held, the Republican government, on Nov. 6, 1936, “relocated” to the Mediterranean port of Valencia. The government was not alone. The world’s press predicted the city’s imminent fall. The next day, the defenders caught a break, when they recovered the Nationalist plans for the coming attack. They were able to shift their forces to defend the Nationalists’ objective — El Parque de Casa de Campo. The next day, Nationalist Gen. Emilio Mola Vidal launched an attack there with 20,000 soldiers, supported by Italian and German light tanks. They were faced by 30,000 ill-equipped and mostly untrained— but inspired
Ocean City Today — men. At this point, most of the defenders of the Republic were workers who had armed themselves. Gen. Mola boasted that a column of Nationalist troops was converging on the capital from each of the four points of the compass, and a “Fifth Column” of Nationalist sympathizers was prepared to rise and strike from within. But, every time it seemed that the Nationalists were about to achieve a breakthrough, La Pasionaria would appear, shout the phrase which she made famous — “¡No Pasarán!” — and rally the defenders. The first battlefield blood transfusions were performed on Republican wounded in the fight for Madrid in November 1936 by world-renowned Canadian Communist surgeon, Dr. Norman Bethune. Dr. Bethune’s techniques paved the way for the famed MASH units. In 1938, he traveled to China to lend his assistance to
the Communist Chinese in their fight against the Japanese. He is the only Westerner to whom statues have been erected in China. Late on Nov. 8, the first International Brigade, the XI (“Hans Beimler”), arrived to assist in the defense of the Spanish capital. It’s 1,900 men were commanded by a Hungarian officer in the Red Army, who had served as a captain in the Imperial and Royal Army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the Great War. He adopted his nom de guerre from Jean-Baptist Kléber, a famous general of the French Revolution. The XIth Brigade consisted of the following battalions: German Edgar André, commanded by Hans Kahle and named for a leader of the German Communist Party who was beheaded on Hitler’s orders on Nov. 4, 1936; French/Belgian Commune de Paris, commanded by Jules Dumont; Polish
AUGUST 10, 2018 Jaroslaw Dąbrowski, commanded by Stanisław Ulanowski. The Brigade adopted the name “Hans Beimler” to honor Beimler, a leader of the German Communist Party, and brigade commissar. He would die during the siege, on Dec. 1, 1936. The brigade’s arrival proved to be a real boost to the morale of the Spaniards defending their capital. Knowing that the Soviet Union was sending aid, and knowing that these soldiers were foreign, the Madrileños shouted, “¡Vivan los Rusos!” as the brigade marched through the Spanish capital. The brigade fought so well in the defense of Madrid, and garnered so much publicity, that Kléber/Stern was labeled by his adopted government “an adventurer,” recalled, and “dispatched!” Two days after the arrival of the International Brigade, the Anarchist Brigade of 4,000 men, under the command of Anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti, arrived from Cataluña to assist in Madrid’s defense. As he was rallying his troops for a renewed counterattack on the Clinical Hospital in the University City neighborhood, on Nov. 19, 1936, Durruti was mortally wounded. The source of the bullet is still disputed — Nationalist enemy or Communist “ally.” By this time, his unit’s effectives were less than 400. Durruti’s body was returned to the Catalonian capital of Barcelona, where it lay in state while tens of thousands passed by. In all, 500,000 attended his funeral. The Anarchists’ place was taken by the newly formed XIIth International Brigade, commanded by Hungarian novelist Mátá Zalka Kemeny, who had taken the nom de guerre Pavol (“Paul”) Lukács. The XIIth consisted of the following battalions: German Ernst Thälmann, commanded by German author Ludwig Renn, and named for the leader of the German Communist Party who would spend 11 years in concentration camps — mostly in Buchenwald — before being executed in 1944; the French/Belgian André Marty, named for the paranoid, inContinued on 76
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