The Good Fight (1984)
Documentary on The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Studs Terkel, narrator.
Written/Produced/Directed: Noel Buckner, Mary Dore & Sam Sills
Studio: Kino International K584
Video: 1.85:1 enhanced for 16:9, color & B&W, newly remastered
Audio: PCM stereo
Extras: Interview with the filmmakers (1988), Bill Bailey Stories, Homage with Pete Seeger, Commemoration of Those Who Served
Length: 98 minutes
Rating: *****
This stirring documentary fills in a part of our nation’s history in the 1930s that many don’t even know about, and most of those that do are unaware of the story’s full implications. The young filmmakers interviewed 11 survivors of the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, and used excerpts from newsreels, photographs and music of the period to create this film on the American experience in that war.
They realized they had to provide some back story to the conflict, and started out with a fascist-protest group which demonstrated when in 1934 the Nazis docked a German ship in New York Harbor flying a swastika flag. Bill Bailey, interviewed in the film, was the one who boarded the ship and tore down the flag, to the hurrahs of the protesters onshore. A democratic republic had dethroned the King of Spain and was making much-needed improvements to the country. But the army under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the right wing and the Catholic church objected to the democratization and launched a civil war. Hitler and Mussolini came to Franco’s aid with arms, bombers and fighter planes. They practiced their new weaponry on innocent Spain’s civilians with military tactics they were to use later in the Second World War.
An international brigade of 35,000 civilian soldiers from 50 countries went to Spain to fight on the side of the Republic against the fascists. It is true they were organized primarily by the communists, but everyone had the same passionate feeling that fascism had to be defeated in Spain before it conquered the world. Roosevelt and the U.S. government kept a strong isolationist stance and steadfastly refused to aid the Spanish democracy. It was the first time our government had completely refused to sell any arms to a struggling democratic country. It even established an embargo on Spain and barred U.S. citizens from traveling there. Following only their consciences, 2800 Americans volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and braved possible loss of citizenship – disguising themselves as tourists and surreptitiously entering Spain to fight for the loyalist cause. They included women and blacks – the first integrated military force.
It was very difficult for the greatly-outnumbered loyalists to fight against the superior weaponry of the fascists, but they experienced some victories at the start. Eventually, however, supplies and ammunition ran low, equipment wore out, and their few planes were shot down. The only country who helped them was the USSR, but they were in the end forced to the sea and left the only free area of the country – around Barcelona – as celebrated heroes who had done their part as best they could. 750 members of the Lincoln Brigade were killed, not counting all the wounded. (One of the vets sings a few loyalist songs, accompanying himself on the piano with his left hand. At the end of the film he is shown from the front and you see that part of his right arm is gone.) Some Hollywood figures and performers in the music world eventually held fundraisers and established hospitals and sent aid for Spain, but it had been too late. Back in the U.S. the vets were branded as “premature antifascists” and even Communists, hounded by the FBI and often unable to get work. Their argument is that the West should have supported them and the Spanish loyalists in defeating the fascists’ rehearsal for WW II, and the loss of millions of lives and untold misery would have been prevented.
– John Sunier
