Voluntarios por la revolución

The participation of thousands of international volunteers on the side of the Republic during the Civil War is known as one of the most epic examples of internationalism in the history of the labor movement. Much less well known, with the notable exception of George Orwell, is the presence of some five hundred foreign fighters in the ranks of the Marxist Unification Workers Party. This book places his experience in the context of POUM military policy; the characteristics and situation of the military forces under the control of the party; the reality of his presence on the Aragon front; and the role of the militia. The product of an exhaustive study of available sources, the book examines the social and political background of these volunteers, in many cases anti-fascist refugees; his participation in the POUM militias; how they would be victims of the slander and repression unleashed against the party in the republican zone; his time in the concentration camps and the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II; and its fate in the post-war years. Finally, he offers a detailed refutation of the charge, prevalent during the Civil War, and which has recently resurfaced in some historical texts, that the POUM and its foreign sympathizers somehow collaborated with the enemy.