Book Review

Let us be clear straight away. This book is not about the military intervention of the fascist states. That is a well-covered topic. Rather it deals with the international volunteers who fought for Franco, a previously un-researched subject. Evidently the number was small – between 1000 and 1500 – and they could hardly have made a military difference. But some made a political difference, either in Spain or back home. In this book, Judith Keene aims to reconstruct the volunteers’ now forgotten world view, and from that, to offer an insight into the workings of the extreme Right in Europe in the interwar years.	1
It seems quite amazing that that no-one has previously attempted this. There are forests worth of books on the war itself, and groves at least on the left-wing International Brigades, even a few case studies of the Nationalist volunteers, such as the really quite farcical Irish brigade. But Fighting for Franco is the first book to treat the subject as a whole. Judith Keene has pulled off a significant scholarly first, and this is the first thing we must congratulate her on.	2
The situation is not so surprising when you come to think about it. The nationalist volunteers were mostly antipathetic characters: ‘Franco and the nationalists were a powerful symbol for pious Catholics, crypto-Nazis, aspiring fascists, old-style conservatives, anti-Semites of every stripe’ (p. 2). Moreover they came from diverse underground movements of mostly unsavoury character across Europe. There was even one Australian, and a few Americans.	3
In the seven essays which make up Fighting for Franco we see pressing forward from the flawed post-World War I world ‘a White International’. It could not have been easy to discern all that was going on, given the oblivion to which the Nationalist volunteers were consigned post-1945, and by the franquista myth of patriotic Spaniards versus foreign-inspired Republican usurpers. Keene identifies five main groupings: volunteers from English-speaking areas, French volunteers, White Russians, the Romanian Iron Guard, and (how innovative and illuminating this last) Franco’s female supporters.	4
The volunteers from the English-speaking areas seem the largest and most diverse group. In addition to the mainly English Catholic publicists such as Sir Arnold Lunn, and our own Paul Maguire, who get a chapter to themselves, we meet US airman Vincent Patriarcha, Frank Thomas, a Welsh salesman straight from Boy’s Own, youthful Sydney undertaker Nugent Bull, Cambridge graduate Peter Kemp, an adventurer, and Eoin O’Duffy, head of the Irish Brigade (of which Franco had at first some hope). Most of these were ‘young, restless, avid for new experience’, with Right tendencies which led them to favour Franco over the Republic (p. 127).	5
Some of the data on the French volunteers is quite shocking, for example their crude antisemitism. The French Francoists in the Joan of Arc Brigade are shown to have emerged from the far Right, Action Francaise and other groups formed in reaction to the victory of Leon Blum and the Popular Front in 1936. The White Russians seem more manageable, poignant even, at least in the aftermath. Here Keene’s researches uncover something like coherence, a grand plan to gather in the Diaspora and beat the Bolsheviks. The only really attractive character in the whole book, Pip Scott-Ellis, a nurse, appears in the last chapter.	6
Some of the important points to emerge are pretty basic, like cultural difference and the negligible military contribution of the volunteers, also the limited views held by so many, notably the women supporters (‘pitifully shallow’ says Keene). We may recognise also a particular mindset in the stress on action and the cult of death, the abusive rhetoric (‘Reds’, ‘human scum’), and the endless reiteration of atrocity stories, mostly from the religious and people who had never been to Spain. The resultant world view is not a pretty one. The second thing we should congratulate Judith Keene on is that she never loses her professional nerve in the portrayal. I noticed only one slip, if a slip it was, referring to ‘Catholic Action types’.	7
If the subjects were not so unattractive, you might even feel sorry for some of them. That is an achievement, is it not? Take the White Russian General Shinkavenko (died 1964), who at least received a small pension. He is last seen playing bridge at San Sebastian. Certainly, the reader is enabled to make the imaginative re-entry into muddled and bigoted worlds. The chapter on the Romanians had me scurrying to the atlas; and the whole thing made me want to go back to Spain, to see Salamanca with new eyes as the HQ of Franco, and Toledo, site of a great set piece which inspired the publicists.	8
The Nationalist regime lasted until Franco’s death in 1975. The international volunteers had nothing to do with his triumph. But perhaps something may be gleaned from their participation. One lesson might be that cataclysms provoke extremely diverse reactions, another that they take longer to live through than we think.	9
Judith Keene’s achievement is impressive for several reasons. It is a first. It is a wonderfully accessible first, despite its subject. And it is an informative first, from which much may be learned. Quite simply, her book does what it sets out to do: it offers ‘a small but clear window on to the political concerns of the extreme Right in the 1930s’ (p. 6). We need to know about that.	10
Macquarie University JILL ROE

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