Part Two: The Popular Olympics: Antifascist Athletes Help Stop a Coup

In part two of this week's reverse episode, James Stout continues his conversation with Margaret about the Popular Olympics of 1936 Spain and the competitors who stayed to fight.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Beginner's Bagpipe with Margaret Kildre. I'm
your host and Margaret Kildre and I don't know how
to play bagpipes, but today you're gonna hear me Wait, no,
hear me out? What if instead we have part two
of the Popular Olympics with James Stout on cool People

(00:21):
who did cool stuff? How does that sound? Everyone? Yeah,
more than the bagpipe ideas, James and Margaret do bagpipe
would be a good podcast, So I think we should
probably pitch that. Yeah, yeah, exactly, all right, excellent, Well,
we just got to get through this and then from
now on we're only playing bagpipes and annoying my neighbors

(00:44):
in the mountains. Because that's the fun thing about if
I started playing bagpipes is that I live in the
mountains and it will echo. Was going to expense it too,
so we could move to Scotland. Yeah, raise highland cattle,
Thanks Daddy, I heart big Daddy. We want to do

(01:08):
yeah the I heart motto. That's why you have to
listen to adverts sometimes. Yeah, so that we can raise cattle.
Sacrifice you pentathlon kicking, Yeah, the sex sextathel on the
sixth kicking see anarchist triathlons, shin kicking, bagpipes and cattle raising. Yeah, so,

(01:34):
Margaret Killjoy, this is cool. People did cool stuff. My
producer is Sophie Lichterman, the my guest is James Stout. James,
how are you doing? Okay? Literally, I'm happy. We've had
a break. We've bagpiped. Yeah, it's been. It's a whole
separate day. What are you talking about? You know I
bagpiped since then? Yeah, totally. And our audio production is

(02:00):
done by Ian. The theme music was written by on Women.
And this is part two of a thing. So if
if this makes no sense to you, well what we
said so far does it makes understand anybody, probably including us,
But you should go back and listen to part one.
If you don't go back and listen to part one,
I can't tell you how how much I will never

(02:21):
trust you. How could you trust someone who comes in
to the second part of a two parter you could?
If no, no, I just I don't. I don't. I
don't get it. I don't get it. And you know,
maybe everyone's different. You have your own way of doing things,
and that's fine. James is actually the host today and
I'm just rambling. James are doing where we at? What's happening? Good?

(02:44):
I'm good. What's happening? All right? Well, we're just gonna
kick off. What's happening. You've listened to the you listen
to the last part, you know, the Spanish civil wards
starting right So a five fifteen in the morning, the
radio announced, people of Barcelona, the moment we feared has arrived.
The army has betrayed it's worth and honor has written
against the Republic. For this, Citizens of Barcelona, the time

(03:04):
of great decisions and great sacrifices have arrived, destroyed this
fascist army. Every citizen must live their duty. Long live
the generality that, long live Catalonia, Long live the Republic,
which is pretty cool thing for a radio to say. Yeah.
So with this, the game slipped into hindsight and the
war assumed disposition. The only thing that really mattered for

(03:25):
the next three years, and what the Vivankos wrote much later,
what could have been a great people's popular Olympics in Barcelona,
prepared with vision and enthusiasm by people of great spirit
who believed in Olympic and human ideals, was lost and
for many of the athletes who had spent a few
days before the Games enjoying the city's nightlife and meeting
other anti fascist athletes. It wasn't a total surprise, right.

(03:48):
They talked to their local translators, they talked to the
people who are hosting them, and the rumors of this
coup had been going around for a long time. M hmm.
Many of these people had fought fashion in their own
countries before. Right. There was a German sprinter. Do you
know who Muriel Rockeiser is? No, he's a German sprinter.
I don't know Muriel Rockiser. She is the the the

(04:15):
love interest of the German sprinter. Okay, German sprinter is
called Otto Bock, which Magpie tried though. Yeah, I was
so proud of her sho and have shut that down.
He's like he's a member of like Antifa with a
capital A right, like like when Antifa was organized by

(04:35):
the KPD. So lots of these people have But who
is she? She's an American Jewish author who was sent
to cover the games by Esquire. Okay, they end up
stuck on a train just outside of Barcelona, and then
they watched this village that they're stuck in go through
its own tiny revolution, right, and it's suddenly run by

(04:56):
the people. Suddenly it's an anarchist village. Now it's run
by the people of the village, right. And then they
go into Barcelona and he joins, and we'll talk about
him a little bit later. Okay, it's it's this is
all written in her book Savage Coast, which is a
very good book that almost no one has read. But
it's a fantastic book and everyone should read it. It's
kind of a novelized version of her relationship with this

(05:17):
guy O Cool. So Barcelona pretty much at this point
becomes what George Will called a city where they're working
class within the saddle, right, And some of the athletes
took a liking to what they saw, and they didn't
like fascism, so they decided that it was worth joining
the fight that worked them out that morning. So the
US team was led by thirty two year old Abraham

(05:40):
Alfred chick Jacken. Everyone calls him Chick, right. So, like
so many of the foreigners who had fled to Spain
to fight, Jacob was Jewish. His parents had taken him
and his two siblings out of Russia when he was
just nine months old to look for a better life
in the USA. They had another daughter after they arrived,
and Chick grew up with two sisters and order brother.
His parents had left Europe to for the anti Semitism

(06:02):
and soon he would return to fight it. So I
want to read a little bit here from this guy
called Pierre Ackerman, who was another Jewish volunteer who fointed
the span Civil War. That his exclamation of why around
thirty percent of the Americans who fointed Spanish Civil War
were Jewish? That makes sense, Yeah, and about ten percent
ten all the foreign volunteers were Jewish. The pursuit of

(06:23):
money is also the pursuit of power. Have the programs
in the world been organized so as to distract attention
from the misery of the people by provoking hatred towards
the Jews? Well, those who are really responsible, the authors
of misery, laugh in secret because instead of attacking their power,
people slaughter the Jews. Your children, however, have not tolerated this.

(06:44):
They have not stooped, and they will not stay silent.
That rules. Yeah, Pierre Ackerman's incredibly based dude. Him and
his brother both die early in on in the Spanish
Civil War, but his his mother was very conservative and
remained very sort of religiously conservative, and he was extremely
radical right, but he by the end of his life
was righting to his mother. She was destroyed by the

(07:06):
fact that both her young sons went to fight and
both died, and him right back being like, we're not
so different, Like we're not it's different as you think.
It's it's really like it literally like I remember reading
those and it literally made me critic It's incredibly fucking
sad and so human. Now that that's really interesting to
me because you do get this like when we talk
about different, um, different communities that are economically disenfranchised or

(07:32):
different communities that are press in different ways, and I
feel like, um, Jewish folks have to deal with us
a lot is specifically the like what I saw about
last time, about the like Schrodinger's you know, bad Guy,
where you're communists or capitalist depending on whatever. But it is,
it's it's systems of trying to have power within a
system that has denied you that power. So I really

(07:54):
like that that he's saying, like, look, we have a
lot in common. We're trying to reclaim I mean I'm
putting words this mouth. But that's interesting to me. Yeah,
it's interesting. The there are some amazing like Jewish socialists
from Mandatory Palestine who or most of them been kicked
out of Mandatory Palestine by the British actually mhm. And

(08:16):
they and they're like anti Zionist some of them, and
they end up fighting in the Spanish Civil War and
they're like, it's amazing. People are the German work of
the Yiddish. It's called the Yiddish are Biter Sports Club.
Who heard all decamped on master to Paris by that time,
like some really amazing stories. There are some good books
about it too. So by nineteen six, i'll Jakin was

(08:38):
an accomplished fighter. He'd wrested at Cornell and narrowly missed
out an Olympic selection in the two US athletes who
did go to Olympics one golden silver. After graduating on
September twenty six with the bachelor's degree in education, he
won the nineteen seven Amateur Athletic Union Niagara District Wrestling Championships.

(08:58):
That was an Olympic qualifying game. Again, he got to
try out and bis didn't quite make it. Despite his success,
he didn't qualify for ninety eight games, perhaps because of
his persistent knee injury, and he decided to peticide his
Olympic dreams and up for a career in education. And
nine and thirty one years old, and he began a
master's degree, and he was teaching university in physical education

(09:22):
at the City University of New York. And he was
married to a woman named Jenny Berman. They actually hyphenated
their names rather than her taking his name, which was
pretty at ahead of their time. Yeah, they were very
like they used the word progressive. Actually the word progressive,
it would be the way they would use for themselves.
And so, yeah, they were extremely progressive. She was a
much more experienced activist than him. She was a social

(09:45):
worker and a communist. She graduated from Syracuse in and
headed directly to the city to begin organizing for the
Communist Party. And in the year before they married, she
made headlines which he left New York Jewish community social
services agencies in a walk up for union recognition. She's
she's pretty cool, pretty cool person. He was deeply influenced

(10:06):
by her convictions, game active in his union and joined
his campus Anti Fascist association in nineteen thirty five. His
his union had voted for a complete boycott of the
Berlin Games because they refused to send athletes to a
country that had discrimination as a national policy. So by
the time, yeah, it seems like a good goal, seems

(10:27):
like everyone should listened to them. He was also very
used to coaching people by the time the popular Olympics
came around, right by both like teaching at the university
and coaching wrestling, so he was the natural choice to
lead the team, right, But that's have still been kind
of nervous to him, like because he hadn't been wrestling
for a while, he was out of shape, and he's
going just like athlete and coach, he still got this

(10:47):
neee issue. He has to like squat down and pull
his knee back in. If you look at this dude,
he is very clearly hard as fucking nails. Had a
flat he knows he's yeah, He's send you a page
of him later. But some of his teammates he would
have known, right. Irving Jenkins, who was a heavyweight boxer,

(11:10):
was still at Cornell when they left for the Games.
As I said, the organizers placed a big emphasis and
having black folks in the United States come and if
you look at the posters for the games, there's one
on my wall, but you can't see it. The posters
feature like a people of different races walking together and
carrying flags, but they're like Catalan flags and Popular Front
flags into the stadium. And they were really invested in

(11:32):
this idea of like different genders, different races or competing
together as part of the Popular Front, which like, if
you look at the Little Olympics, it's mostly naked white dude, right, like,
like the whole propaganda is like it looks like the
Chippendale's kind of yeah, it's buff white dude in buff
white dude in thong. So some of the other folks

(11:53):
were Dot Tucker. She was a sprinter and a union
leader in Harlem. She was the only black woman on
the team. She's joined by Frank Payton, who's also a
sprinter and boxer, who with Charlie Burley. Charlie Burley is
kind of an interesting guy. He was younger than everyone else, thirteen,
younger than chicken, and he had a pretty difficult upbringing.

(12:14):
He was a mixed day. He was a boxer. That's
the perfect name for a boxer, Yeah, it is. I
hadn't even thought of that anyway in a life. Yeah, yeah,
Burly Charlie. His dad was a black coal miner, his
mother was an irishwoman from County Cork, and he began

(12:34):
to box at the age of twelve. He won a
junior national title in the Golden Gloves competition and he
was seen as kind of the big hope for US boxing.
He only narrowly lost the senior competition in but he
refused to try out for the Berlin Games. He wasn't
going to go to Berlin, racist sass country and compete,

(12:55):
and so they invited him the last minute to Barcelona.
Right They left on a ship called the Transylvania on
the third of ju Line I, and another of the
athletes was called Burly dan Chick. He was a gymnast, Bernie,
not Burly, and he kept a diary. He writes about
the food on board. He said, we've been treated very nicely,
and he said, since we're on the road to fame,

(13:16):
everyone's being very kind. Basically, they would start up checking,
made him get up early every morning and run around
the deck to stay fit while he like sits on
a fucking like a chair the sun. He's like he
would have seen this rom com. I like this rom com. Okay, yeah,

(13:37):
it would be a good rom com. He and the
two other earth Jenkins, Jarley Berlie and I'll Chack and
would all fight on the deck. They and then Bernie
Giant Chick was very piste off because there wasn't a
high bar in the gym, so he just sunk around
with the banisters and stuff. You can imagine. It's just
like this kind of a bunch of crazies on the boat.

(13:58):
They caused a lot of problem when they would go
into dinner right because they they found that their table
kept getting moved and normally on I guess on these
long boat trips. I'm not a not a person who
goes on long boat trips, but you have like an
a sign table. You said it every day. But they
kept moving the table for the Popua Olympics team, and
they work because people are racists. Because people were racist,

(14:24):
so you were the racism caused some rowdiness, so they
refused to They refused to move their table anymore, and
they refused to segregate their table. That worked out for them, unfortunately,
they there's a ping pong tournament for everyone aboard the ship,
I guess, and that the baly Gantic writes about this
in the story. It's interesting to hear it from his perspective,

(14:46):
or he's a Jewish guy from New York. The Communist
Party in the United States and the nineteen thirties has
thoroughly embraced the cause of black folks in the United States, right,
it's genuinely invested in this, and he's read about it
a lot, and like it's also invested in this. But
they well, I guess. They're playing ping pong one night
and he realizes that the like Frank Payton Charlie Berley

(15:07):
team are gonna win. He's like, hell, yeah, we're gonna
fucking show them, like they're going to be owned. And
then they like throw the game and he's very upset.
But this he's like, oh, I see what's happened, Like
they don't want to win, they don't want to cause
the first Like that's really sucked up. Like yeah, he
writes it hurts, see what happened in his diary the
the black athletes throw the game. Yeah, such that they

(15:29):
don't like cause a deal with all the rich past
because they've they've learned how to navigate life as a Yeah,
they've learned that sort of code switching and things that
they have to do. And Bernie danjecause this this Jewish
guy from New York is like, damn, that's fucked up.
So that when they got there, they made sure that
they had all the black athletes standing at the front
for all the photographs and like put them forward for

(15:50):
interviews and such when they got to England because they
look you can see him having his realization. I think
it's really interesting because a sound like when things are
when you present things, and that when you see things
in the totally modern context, you could be like, Okay,
this seems like also a lot of like tokenization and stuff,
right you know, they're like, oh, we're going to make
sure that everyone's marching together with the flags. And it's

(16:11):
just like really interesting. You know, there's just like fine
line and they're like living in this very different context
where it seems like to me as a as a
white girl, but this is a very positive thing that
they're doing. Um that it's by having the black people
in front and having you know, the games, having very
intentionally like diverse photos and things like that. But it's

(16:33):
like it seems like this is before it gets like
all twisted into the current weird liberal heal version of that. Yeah,
because it's not just representation politics, right, it's also like, oh,
like if someone wants to kill you because of the way,
because who you are, then I will kill them first
like that, which yeah they doing right, Like it's it's
not they don't Yeah that is literally what do Yeah,

(16:56):
they don't stop at the photograph, right, Like the response,
it's I think interesting that he's like sees maybe for
the first time ever, like like racism happening to his
friend in his responses like how can I show solidarity
with this person? And like what yeah, yeah, and so
I think it. Yeah, it's interesting that them negotiating that
space is really interesting in his diary. And I want

(17:18):
to write another book about all of this. So I
have a lot of sources here. Yeah, they'll be cool. Yeah,
hopefully I want to do biographies of each of these people.
So they arrived in Britain, they take a train through
France and they have the best time in Barcelona, right
that They're going out to bars, they're going out to clubs,
they're meeting like you know how it is like when

(17:39):
you're young, and you travel and you meet in a
bunch of other people who believe in the shame ship
you believe in. You're like, oh, that's amazing, Like and
I kind of I literally can't imagine a better time
in place to be alive than what you're describing. If
you've been brought up being like our sport isn't for you.
You're on the left sports and few you give a
funk about things that on sport, And then like you're
here are twenty thousand people You're in like Barcelona, which

(18:02):
is you know, the revolutions in the air, and yeah,
so I think they've checking sort of struggles to keep
them training. You can see the sort of suck it. Yeah,
they're gonna get drunk and fuck yes, they absolutely want
to get drunk and funk. They are like because sex
work is legal, right and unionized, and so they're going
to the brothel or whatever the place where you can

(18:26):
pay people for sex work and they're having your time
and like there, yeah, they're enjoying it. About five fifteen,
this radio announcement comes on, right and they start hearing
shooting in the street and his Darry entry for his
days comes the revolution with revolution in block capitals. So

(18:47):
they all go and stand on the bars of their
balcony and they watched their battle raging. They don't. He
also wrote in his daries other things, that they don't
do things by halves out here, and they that's true. Yeah,
they weren't working around. Yeah, so progressive that we don't
have a government. Okay, millions of people will fight for this. Yeah,

(19:10):
people are, including some of you. So they kept looking
at they were so fascinated by what was going on.
They kept looking out the window, and then like snipers
would think they were at the snipers and shoot at
the window. So they go to another room and look
out the windows. I would stop, some of us would stuff.
They would be a one point, there's a lull in
the firing, and they go out and somehow we're able

(19:32):
to convey that they are athletes for the Olympics, and
everybody stopped shooting so they could go and get some food.
Both sides are, like he just wrote in his diary,
they stopped the war so that we can pass the
real like Moses moment. I guess. So once they've they've
been out, they realized that like the situation, right, the

(19:54):
barricades where things are happening. Charlie Bertie has been time
about a week. It doesn't speak Spanish. Weapons are in
very short supply. Most of people the barricades don't have them,
and so he grabs a crowbar starts leaving up stones
from the cobbled road and helping people build barricades. Hell yeah, yeah,
it's incredibly cool. So these guys are all drawn to help.

(20:17):
You can look at pictures. It's really interesting. You look
at pictures of July. You can see these barricades build
and then pop your Olympics posters in the background, and
people like there's there's one of people hiding behind the
ticket booths, like firing their little mousers out. It's very cool.
So by the evening co had been defeated. The next

(20:37):
day the anarchists would finish a job storming the barracks
and seezing thousands of rifles. This is when last for
the anarchists died because their tactic was mainly to just
run towards danger, which has like limited tactical prowess. Yeah mao,
and yeah, we had another episode about this. It's some
incredibly cool things happened, like they roll out rolls of

(21:00):
news print from the newspaper factory and use them as
an impromptu barricade to fire from behind, which is very cool.
So you can actually see as well, like sometimes you
can see at the barricade people are like that that
newsprint that newspaper, right, would it would have printed newspapers
that would have gone out. The newspapers went out the

(21:20):
night before to be read that day, so you can
see things which were written speculatively, being like, the opening
ceremony was a great success. Yeah, opening ceremony was we
stopped a bat. Yeah, they came there to do anti fascism,
so I guess it was a great success. And so

(21:41):
in the next few days industricual nationalized vehicles expropriated from
the homes of the plotters, Militia columns were formed from
the various unions, and the Popular Front took on a
physical form as the columns marchshoft to Zada fight. The
remaining athletes paraded through the city, singing the International in
various languages, led by Scottish bag This that's our goal.

(22:03):
We can play the International alright. So sadly not everyone
was so lucky. French athlete had been shot in the
first hours of the cue. The British wanted to leave
immediately and offered the Americans a place on their ship
the United States Continent. So they went to the continent
to be like what should we do. The concert was

(22:24):
like you leave today, or we're like we're washing our
hands of you. Basically that's yeah. I guess, like, look,
if you're trying to get out, you've got to get
out right now. Otherwise there was a boat for them.
Bernie Dan chicks. Darry is incredibly funny. He's like a
kid who had to let go home from sound accomp Berlie.
He writes, all of my Spanish pals have left, with

(22:46):
Gossa and Valencia in the army, like he's sad. They
went to one bar for a final time and then
say goodbye to the city and the days of father.
Not everyone left. About four hundred athletes side is take
up arms and stay and fight for the Republic, And
I want to talk about some of them for the
rest of this episode. Okay, do you know who probably

(23:08):
won't take up arms and kill fascists because they don't
have arms, because they have a little turtle legs. Yeah, Oh,
you're tell about the ads. The kinds of people who
advertise on the show are on like you could mount
It's a weapon on a turtle if you wanted to.
They have a decently high armor class. But um on

(23:29):
the table too. That's white bass. Yeah, that's true. Slow
and steady wins the race. What they say, the turtle tank.
We're brought to you by turtle Tank, genetically engineered monsters
on our side. You ever want to see a turtle
eat a Nazi turtle tank? It's right, Yeah, Boston Dynamics

(23:52):
didn't know that was coming. No, that's the The other
side uses the robots we have. Yeah, it's like red
Wall meats I Warhammer. Okay, here's that. Alright, we're back.
There was an advert for turtle tank, please buy one.

(24:16):
So one of these guys is called Bill Scott. His
actual name is Willoughby, which is a belting name, but
he went by Bill for probably obvious reasons. He's a
Protestant bricklayer whose father had fought in the Irish Citizen
Army in the Eastern Rising. He himself had fought with
the i RA, and he traveled to the to the

(24:37):
Games to represent a free an independent island. So one
of the one of the things about the Games with
people competed as nations and not states. Yeah, so like
the exiled Jews of Europe. Like, if you're a German
Jewish person, you don't really want to be competing for
Germany given the general vibes. Yeah, yeah, it's bad. Yeah,
no one could quite pick up on it. But if

(24:58):
bad ship was going down, so they decided to compete
as the exiled Jews of Europe, right, Like as a group,
the colonized people want to get to compete for their colonizer, right,
So an island, it's colonized country, right, so they're not
going to compete for the colonizer. He had presumably had
his enough of repressive regimes and impression national identity after

(25:18):
he was imprisoned by the British military, and so he
decided he was going to stay in Spain. He's an
experienced fighter, doesn't like fascists. Yeah, I mean that makes
sense here an IRA fighter, like, yeah, a large number
of Ira men for in the in the Spanish Civil War. Also,
a number of Irish Catholics went to join Franco fashions.

(25:41):
Yeah yeah, yeah. They actually also did a very good
job of shooting fascists. I heard that they didn't mean to.
It's a major difference, you know, you say they didn't
mean to, but I like to believe, yeah, they had
a moment on things, so we can we can have
that one for ourselves and like, okay, and this is

(26:03):
like an important thing to think about. It is because
I think we oversimplify Irish struggle as like Catholic versus Protestant,
which is like not fucking true. And so yeah, you're
like this Protestant, I ra a fighter, went and fought
for the republic, you know, versus like, go ahead, people
of Catholic heritage also fought through republic and famously an

(26:23):
institution which burned churches and disinterred nuns. Yeah, but which
you know is based. But that's another one that gets
me banned from Twitter quite a lot, actually, is the
burned church with the disinterned nuns. And see, I I
would actually hold that's like part of why we threw
the twentieth century is that, um, by being like so

(26:44):
obsessively materialist, I understand why people were being like fun
the Spanish Catholic Church, right, it was like this oppressive
institution or whatever. But like I think when it just
became this like therefore only militant atheists need apply. Everyone
is not a militant atheist is like Okay, I guess
I gotta go fight on that other side. Yeah, that's fair.
So interestingly, like if you look at the churches they burned,

(27:05):
people very ready burnt churches in their village or neighborhood.
They like went to the other church. The churches where
the priests had been like genuinely like compassionate even though
it didn't disagree, tended don't get burned. Also, lots of
the churches in Barcelona we used a sniper's nest by
the fascist so that that one's getting burned. No, and yeah,
and a lot of the priests were like specifically working

(27:26):
with the fascist regime. And then like I'm under the
impression and you would know more about this that in
the Basque country, Um, the like anti church stuff didn't
really happen because the church wasn't on the fascist side
as much. In the car the car Lists who were
part of that were on the fascist side. Um okay, yeah,

(27:47):
but they were like radical Catholics and we're talking about
cards in the day they stuck Okay, like people whose
whole thing is like some niche argument about royal lineage
and a bit of prepared to die for that, which
they did. Fortunately, everyone gets what they want. Yeah, yeah,
they get to meet the guy that they're so big into.

(28:09):
So Bill's got fights in the tom Mann Cinturia. What
happens is that in the days after the coup, these
national groups organizing into what are called centuria, which are
like it's it's it's a word from Roman legions, center
and century. Yeah, a hundred people, which they weren't, but
they're broadly based on like you have like the Botwin

(28:30):
centurion who are allargedly Jewish. We have Gustavo stores, the Italians,
tom Mann English speaking, so they're broadly based on language groups. Right.
I think the Commune of Paris Centurio was the French one.
Let's say, yeah, yeah, there was a Salomon which was

(28:51):
German speaking, and Salmon was the like the leader of
Antifa when it was a KPD organization. He spent a
seven years in solitary confinement in a concentration camp, killed
in yeah, his his, he got it fucking rough TV.
The prelude to the popular Olympics, they did like a
trial event, and it was called the Thalament Cup, like

(29:13):
in sort of recognition of him. And so Bill Scott
got shot in the throat and returned home to stand
for election as a candidate for the Communist Party of Ireland.
How many how many people because or what got shot
in the throat? This is just like a throat shooting competition. Yeah, clearly,

(29:34):
I don't know what for the throat? Yeah? Is that
very effective? They always survived? Yeah, well yeah, they Well,
I think we've got a skewed star boy here. A
survivor's bias might be all right. And so he gets
booted out for a Republican candidate, and so he returned

(29:55):
to Spain it gets shot in the leg. Yeah, and
again these people are fucking incredible. Don't never say that. Yeah.
He goes back and then leaves the Communist Party because
he's disgusted by the monitor of ribbon truck tract. Yeah.
You see a lot of these people do exactly that,

(30:17):
like them leaving forty one and from then until his
death he gives writes letters to editors and gives interviews
talking about how like we've forgotten the memory of what
the popular friend was, what the Spanish civil war was
what this moment was, which is really cool. Like another
thing you see about these guys is they're dedicated to
preserving their memory. Another person I want to talk about,

(30:40):
and I think this is a woman you may have
been confused with Marina Janesta, is called Fanny Schoenheit. Okay,
Fanny is a Dutch woman. She kind of got bored
of living there and moved to Barcelona because she I
think she wanted to be a war correspondent, but she
wasn't really having much luck. She game committed communists and

(31:02):
she helped organize the games, right she was. She was
one of the people who like helped put it on.
They had lots of lots of They had a very
liberal asylum policy in a republic, so you had a
lot of anti fascist Germans Italians. So she probably stepped
in the stadium the night before the games, like most
of them did, which probably prevented her and thousands of others,
hundreds of others from fascist turning up at their homes

(31:22):
to kill them the next day. So instead she said
about killing fascists. Asks of soldiers marked their barracks. Yeah, yeah,
she was good at this point. March of their barracks
into Buslona and left us across the city. Grab guns
had hidden away or picked up the weapons some soldiers
who had no further use for them barricades because they
were dead. Barricades sprang up across the streets, and snipers

(31:46):
took up positions in rooftops and church towers. Somehow, at
this point Fanny shoon hit manages to get a submachine gun.
I don't know how unless she had anarchist friends, because
the anarchists fucking loved a submachine gun. I love to
drive by shooting like they really they'd watched the films
about Chicago and they were into it, Like the Rutie

(32:09):
talks a lot about his machine pistol and how cool
it is. Of course, yeah yeah, yeah to bank, yeah yeah,
well yeah, that's what they were trying to be. Yeah.
I want to quote here from excellent article in The
Volunteer by von Scholton, who's written a biography of Schoonheight.
In a letter to a friend in Rotterdam, she later

(32:31):
described her she and her comrades and to the military
barracks from the roof and how they confiscated the arms
found there. I wore a rather conspicuous yellow shirt. It's
a miracle they didn't shoot me, she said. But perhaps
they were supposed surprised to see me that they forgot
it might have been surprised to see a lady in
a yellow shirt with a submachine gun. But she was
soon wearing a more conventional uniform in the militia. Like

(32:53):
thousands of other people with little to know military experience,
she joined the militia that day, and unlike many of them,
she survived. Almost every newspaper in the city carried an
interview with her, and and it's she became known as
the Queen of the machine Gun in the Catalan press.
I want to keep liking her. I like her right now. Yeah,
you're gonna you just hold back on the Michie Well,

(33:16):
I didn't look at she she was young. She was
doing a thing. Yeah, Sandy shouldn't always use her queen
of machine Gun powers for good. But seven she'd become
an officer in the People's Army, and the malicious are
gradually being regularized, made into a more militarized another word
under Soviet influence. Right, a longstanding kidney. She brought her

(33:37):
back from the front. And it's really fucking annoying actually
to read about this in the Spanish press, where they're like, oh, yeah,
her kidneys were bad and so she had to come
back and to read about it. Sometimes it's written about
like a Dutch press where they're like it was too
much for her sensitive constitution. I mean, like, if I
only once in my life dropped through the roof of

(33:57):
a fascist place with not no uniform and just a
submachine gun and submachine got a bunch of bunch of
guys and take all their guns, if I do that
once in my life and then I'm done forever, like
one that, Yeah, that's enough for anyone's sensibility. That's enough. Yeah,
Like like that's PTSD land. Even when you win, you know,

(34:21):
like you'll be seeing them dead people for the rest
of you. Yeah, yes, yeah, even if they were bad people. Yeah.
One doesn't have to particularly sensitive to be impacted by that. Yeah. Anyway,
So she becomes a machine gun instructor and teaching a
bunch of other people to shoot machine guns. But in
the event of May seven, which people will probably be

(34:42):
familiar with as when communists and Nonstylinist communists and the
non Stalinist comunists who joined by the anarchists for Industry
of Barcelona. People will maybe have read Georgie was but
commics to Catalonia. He did a good book, book three D.
He mentions it. In the central Square Barcelona plub day Catalunia,
there's a landmark which is the Hotel Colon, Alo writes.

(35:05):
The Hotel Colon, the headquarters of the pursuit, dominated the
plaza in a window near the last oh but one
in the huge Hotel Colon that sprawled across its face.
They had a machine gun that could sweep the entire
square with deadly effect. Unfortunately, it was probably Fanny Schoenheight
who was manning this machine gun, So she was machine

(35:27):
gunning anarchist by and other Martias even yeah, yeah, the
Marxist people who weren't trotsky As, despite what you might
read on Twitter dot com. Yeah, it's rather sad, this split.
It's it's something like we can't go into in death,
but it's just split's very sad. It's at the beginning
of the end of the Cathleen Revolution. She did, she

(35:47):
did spend time after she was injured in a car
crash in Tatraghana and what she was recovering. She had
a brief relationship with Ramon Mercabert, who is famous for
killing Trotsky with an ice axe. Huh so she she's
she's lived alife. Yeah, she at some point, perhaps due

(36:08):
to the fact that like international newspapers couldn't fathom that
a lady was going around machine gunning people. Okay, wait
to go back to the ice axe. Yeah see I
always heard ice pick. And there is an object that
is both of these things. Yeah see I said ice
pick yesterday and and friend of the show Robert Evans
told me it was an ice axe. Well, because there's
something I imagine an ice axe with a pick. It

(36:32):
could seem like a pick, right, But there's also an
ice pick that's basically a screwdriver that you used to
like clean ice out of something. And it makes so
much more sense when you picture it with a handle
and an ice It all makes more sense now. Yeah,
look at like it like you would use for climbing,
like you got a self arrest or whatever you Yeah,

(36:53):
I was imagining like I got to get him in
the ear or something, you know, like a little spike
on a a handle like, yeah, like got to get
in the eye or whatever, you know. I think it was.
I think it was a fairly violent one thing. Yeah,
I didn't. I haven't. I don't know enough about Trotsky

(37:13):
to have known how he does. It's that anyway, big
understand it. And yeah, yeah, she just moved to the
Dominican Republic, didn't tell anyone what she's been doing before,
and just like had a different life. Okay, after this,
I do want to thank Anna van Vellen for helping
me translate some of the articles from Dutch about her.
You know, what, do you know who won't drive an

(37:35):
ice tool into your skull? I mean, see, this is
the thing, is like when we're talking about the advertisers,
I don't feel confident saying yeah it's not it's not
a given. But yeah, I don't even know about I
know about that. The turtle tank. They can't close their
hands right because of their width to arm length ratios.
An ice pick, No, that's pretty safe. But if you

(37:58):
have a turtle tank and and I sacks, you could
drive by ice as people by jumping from the back
of the turtle tank. No phenomenal stuff. Yeah, and if
you do it once GTSD for the rest of your life. Yeah, yeah,
you're killing people, probably actually fox you up. Yeah, it's
not We're not supposed to do it. No, but turtle

(38:19):
tank will help you if you decide you want to
be a pacifist by a turtle tank. Turned out that
for I'll check, and leaving on that ship wasn't so
much goodbye as esta pronto. He returned home to the
home he shared with Jenny Berman. The second even gives
you the dress if you want. It was one street

(38:41):
over from the townhouse where Winston Churchill's grandparents lived at
think of the area had taken a turn for the worst,
and it certainly wasn't sort of place where rich British
people live. They lived on a tall, skinny block of
flat since an area dominated by clothing manufacturing. They were
close to Madison Square Park and to Madison Square Guard.
When he came home, he attended lots of Union rallies

(39:02):
at Madison Square Garden. You can see evidence of that.
When they came home, he obsessively followed news of Spain,
but after a few months he still felt pulled back.
Even though he was speaking at fundraisers, he didn't feel
like he was doing enough, so a year later he
decided to go back. He set sail on the seventh.
Which guy is this again? I'm sorry, this is al

(39:24):
Jake instance, dude with the flat nose. This is the
the wrestling coach. The coach okay, the one who in
my mind was sitting on the lawn chair watching everyone
else run labs. But that is not actually the case.
He was running laps with them. Yes, more hands are
seemed to have been okay, yeah, more of a more
of a leaded by doing guy. He's leaving on the

(39:45):
seventh of July, which is like a year and four days.
Alad he left the first time. He lands exactly a
year after the uprising began, and from set casts he
takes a train to a city. On the t rain
you could read like these accounts of the International brigades
coming down the train. People all along the route would
come and like wave and be like super happy to

(40:10):
see them, and try and try and trade oranges for
cigarettes they couldn't get. And if they are all these
very funny accounts of International brigadiers like just getting crippling
like a diarrhea from eating too many oranges their first
military experience. And they went to Albacette where they trained,
he joined what was called the Mcenti Papino Battalion that

(40:32):
was being stood up in July. They were better known
as the mac Paps. Although at this time most of
the volunteers were from the United States, it was officially
a Canadian battalion, and most of them were working class
men from areas like Nova Scotia, right. A lot of
them Jewish as well, and most of them had lost

(40:52):
jobs in depression, educated themselves about the left and decided
to come and fight in International Brigades. Their traveled to
Spain was illegal, but they felt the consequences of staying
home were much worse. Yeah, they were, as International Brigades
unions go, they're pretty old. Most of them were over
thirty and highly motivated. So they're like people who are
really in it to win it. They're not like there

(41:13):
were definitely people in the International Brigades who are like,
I'm twenty one, funckt why not? Right? Like, um, this
wasn't one of those groups in the most parts, and
they kind of this is my parents are afraid of fascism.
I'm afraid of fascism. I will destroy fascism. I'm going
to go do it. Yeah, yes, Yeah, I've spent my
life fighting bears in Canada. Now I will come and
fight fascists the Canadians and spancy of always fascinating. There

(41:37):
was also like one of the first battlefield or like
at least frontline blood transfusion set ups in the world,
well set up by a Canadian doctor. He would drive
around in a Renault two turned van. Yeah, like it
was like literally set it was a milk truck inside, right,
just an old timey milk truck would go and deliver blood,

(41:58):
blood transfusions to save soldiers lives. And so. One of
the articles that Jacken probably saw when he was in
New York was George Steers account of the bombing of Guernica.
Places I used to give tours to American kids. Jenny
also probably read Steers report. It was really like one
of the pieces of reporting that change people's perspective on

(42:19):
the Spanish Civil War war than anything else, even though
other cities have been bombed all around the world, Even
though other cities were bombed in Spain, it was that
those images of little children thrown around like rag dolls,
or columns of refugees marching out of town were the
one that's that really drove solidarity to Spain more than
anything else. She probably also saw the poster featuring a

(42:42):
feast ring, a picture of a dead child, and a
squadron of flashes fascist planes flying overhead. That was there
if you tolerate this, your children will be next poster,
which is a pretty famous fantasy fool war face and
just true, just really true, objectively true. It's also the
name of a song about Man Street Preachers, which is
a very good song. That song is why I really

(43:03):
got into Spanish of the war stuff, and I was like,
well that's cool. Yeah it was cool, but yeah, it
remains true. It is true now, it was true then,
and I think she definitely noticed the treuth of that.
So she came to spend a month after our She
she came in August. Women at that time weren't me
taking as international volunteers, so she couldn't fight to defend

(43:25):
those children, but what she could do was user skill.
She had to help them because remember she was a
social worker, right where. I have no functional memory for names. Okay,
she's his wife, yes, okay, great, but they hyphenate their names.
I'm just using the last name and chacking. So she
comes months after him, and along with five other women

(43:47):
from the Lowery Shide, she arrives in Spain and she's
going to work with the two hundred thousand children who
have been made orphaned by the war. Right these child refugees,
she believed art was an important way for children to
process their traumatic experiences, and so her and her friends
start up creating the first ever art therapy program for

(44:07):
children in wartime. Yeah, it's super cool. The children made
thousands of drawings. Actually oldest Huxley wrote the there's a
there's an exhibit of these drawings, and the The Cataler
was written by alders Taxley. Yeah, who was actually pretty cool. Yeah,
cool guy, good books. Maybe read it. And so the

(44:29):
drawings are pretty pretty hard when you know what happened.
Pretty a priot. You can see them actually there you
see San Diego. There's an exhibit on the library website
called they still draw pictures Like I used to go
and look at these drawings all the time when I
was there. But like her, they also have hope. There's
one amazing picture which shows a Spanish peasant faith almost

(44:51):
He's burying an axe deep in the head of a dragon,
wearing a swastika. Yeah, it's yeah, it's like if your
child comes home from school ho having drawn that today,
you have absolutely fucking aced it as a parent. And
it doesn't matter what the teachers are telling you. They're
doing fine. Yeah, if you're in San Diego going special collections,

(45:11):
lie very nicely and you can go and see the
I want to see that picture. I gotta Yeah, yeah,
it's on. It's on the Abraham Lincoln bring a Veterans
to the over had Labor Gade website. I'm making a
note for myself because yeah, yeah, it's my interests. Yes,
it is. The when he left Spain, slogan had been

(45:36):
no passavan right, they shall not pass, and the slogan
changed to pass we shall passed. So at this point
he wasn't really capable of doing that much passing. His
knee was so bad that he had to squat down
and wrench it back into place whenever it dislocated. His wife, Jenny,
considered telling the recruiters about this, she decided not to.

(45:57):
When he arrived, things are in a pretty bad state
with the internet to brigade the increasing like regularization under
mostly Soviet control. You have all these officers who are
called Mexicans, they are not Mexicans. That they're from the
Soviet Union, various parts of the Soviet Unions. Some of
them are white Russians actually, So like the white Russians
felt that if they volunteered to fight in the Spanish

(46:18):
Civil War, they'd be allowed to return home. And so
this odd thing of like white Russians dedicated, like Polish
and Hungarian communists working together with Spanish anarchists to fight
fascists and monarchist and that they seem to to have
worked it out the like early in the war. Really

(46:40):
like it was it was anarchists doing really brave shit
that had been integral to the success of the second
public military strategy. By this point that had stopped and
for the most part, those sort of left libertarian people
were being actively persecuted, right. There were still anarchist units,
there was anarchist militia units, there were still anarchists in

(47:02):
the International Brigade, but at the sort of the beginning
of the end for the alliance between communist and annists
been persecuted by the Communist that's what you're saying, that's correct. Yeah,
Like the s I M. The Service in Talligentia militari
of the Military intelligence Service probably interrogated more anarchists and
it did fascists in fact core that's really good way
to have a united front. Yeah, it's great. There were

(47:25):
active fascist saboteurs in the headquarters of the like Andre
Marti who ran the International Bargator. There were fascist saboteurs
from this French group. Actually they were funded by the
Laureal Cosmetics Empire. By that stuff. They they were actively
sabotaging stuff, They put like sand into machine anserity and
they never got caught because they were so busy looking

(47:47):
for anarchists. Yeah, and then also finding out that like
all of the fucking high up communists who were like
behind a lot of the repression then also got purged
and fucked over and sailed by Stalin. It's like Daddy's
Stalin doesn't love you. He's going to kill all of you,

(48:09):
like you'll get you to kill the anarchists, and then
he's going to kill you because you were too close
to them. Yes, they go ahead. No, the general who organizes,
he's not really fair to say, he organizes to defense
to Madrid, but he gets a credit for at the
time and then he's called Claib. Claiber is not his
real name, but that's the name that he They all
use different names, and then suddenly like they make him

(48:32):
up to this big thing, right like clai By the
Savior of Madrid. And then two months later he's been
accused of claiborism, which is like promoting oneself in the media.
And I'm not saying he was blamed as because he
was anyways deeply at fault, but yeah, maybe stop purging
your own side. Yeah, and hot tip from cool people,

(48:54):
cool tips. One of cool people did cool stuff. Purges
generally speaking, not a positive verb. There's yeah anywhere you
cut it. Yeah, wow fuck yeah, don't be purging. Yeah,
I was going to say it, Yeah, don't do it.
So the the MC perhaps first saw actually at point

(49:18):
to Debro preparing for the assault was probably an absolute
nightmare for Chicken because the fuel didn't arrive for the
trucks to take them to the front, right, And as
he's a quartermaster and later an armor us so g's
his job to organize, like getting the people the stuff
that they need. So when imagine that this was something
of a bit of a below to him. So they

(49:40):
instead had to march right, and they look like a
wagon train from a Western movie, like they're they're marching
across the dry plains, which is giant plume of dust.
It's very obvious where they're going. And they end up
fighting at bell Cheat, where they developed the innitiative, innovative
tactic of U. So what would happen would be that

(50:02):
generally they would hold up in the church right that
the Francois troops because I had thick, old medieval walls,
and so they developed the in detective of rolling their
anti tank guns right up to the church, pressing them
up against it and shooting through the walls that way.
It can't be good for the hearing. No, yeah, it's incredible.

(50:24):
They fought like house to house, room to room. This
is their first introduction to combat. Right that the people
who on the way to the battle, they pulled over
got out of the truck and each got five rounds
so they could learn to use the gun like this is.
They're they're not like hugely professionally prepared so as they

(50:47):
are the Americans, but then are like New York City.
I guess, yeah, it took any Some of the guns
they used were made in America, sold to Czarius Russia,
sold by Zarius Russia to Mexico, and then imported by
the Spanish Second Republic from Mexico. So they're really good
modern weapons. Georgia will fucking love that. That's they were

(51:09):
most ins Yeah, yeah, Georgia will absolutely love the most
in the gun. Yeah, for the time they were finding
they were very happy to have thin compared to some
of the other stuff they had. It's fair enough. They
you can also read if anyone's ever like bought an
old military servile's gun. Often they come when cosmoline, which
is like a thick goo um and you want to

(51:29):
clean that off before you use it, and you can
read in their accounts that they don't clean it off,
and like they're all getting burnt from when they start
used to get the barrel heats up and it leaks out.
Oh Jesus was just burning oil coming and they're probably
like slipping on it and then like dropping it and
then like slipping in the fucking grease. Yeah, which is
not what you want your first time being shot at.

(51:52):
They also took part in like a very experimental vehicle
born infantry attack. You still see the Russians doing this right,
they'll sit on top of Hanks when this is just
their doctrine that the first time that's happened was with
the mac Paps. Unfortunately, tanks got stuck in the mud
and so that went pretty badly for them. They also
took part in the Battle of terry Well, which is

(52:14):
battle begins actually with a scene that probably inspired Hemingway's
book for him, The Bell Tolls. There are these two
guys called Irving Golf and Bill Alto. Bill Alto was gay,
and it does not seem to have been like computable
for Hemingway, like he deceivesed, just like, no, not putting
that in there. It's a short word. He should like. Yeah, yeah,

(52:38):
it's really sad to having to bill To actually like
this guy. He trains to be a guerrilla in Moscow,
comes back to Spain and does he's behind enemy lines
blowing up bridges. M that's so yeah, it's very cool.
And then he comes back and he's basically they one
of his comrades to find out he's gay, and it
gives him up to the Communist Party and they reject him.
And it's fucking like, I don't know what the fund

(52:58):
is wrong? With people. Fuck every part of that. Okay, yeah,
like it did. What what then you're doing is, dude,
it's literally like I was prepared to die next to
you and kill for you, and here you are. And
this was there were a lot of gay people in
in the international gage right, The commander of one of
the British battalions was gay people and it was known,
like it wasn't a secret. Yeah, the common tern didn't

(53:20):
like it, but like there was still that they weren't
entirely controlled by the comment turn and like if people
were good at what they were doing, and they were
good at killing fascist and it wasn't a paramount concern. Yeah,
So when in doubt why some centralized authority in Russia
says you should do, isn't what you should do? Yeah,

(53:40):
just don't do it, especially if they've already given you guns.
They can't stop you. Yeah, you know, if that's what
they guns for. Yeah. And actually another fine purjory. So
like Christmas right just before the Battle of Terror, well,
Paul Robeson visits themac paps and sing some a song
on probably some songs, and then he goes back to

(54:03):
Paris to perform a concert to raise funds for international brigades,
and that's when the purchase of the old quote unquote
old old Bolsheviks started. And he hears about it just
before he goes on stage and he's like, fuck you,
I'm not doing a concert, Like hell yeah, yeah, interesting guy,
Paul Robinson a lot to read about him. His pain too. Uh.

(54:24):
The next day after they raged, he had a concert
and they all got drunk. Their commander got them up
and made them march with the snow so they would
wake up. Frank had adverted his troops from madridgit Well
and that began a battle. There was every bit of
freezing and every bit of terrible as Stalingrad, and it
probably should have provided the world with the vision of
what was happening, but the word wasn't paying attention. Franco

(54:44):
reported when he he captured the city, he hadn't a
British reporter Kim Philoby. Kim Philby was actually a spy
who was actively trying to kill Franco at the time.
It was reporting from the nationalist side, and he tried
to go into tell a Well thinking that it had
been liberated because Franco had just been bullshitting about this. Yeah,

(55:05):
he's going in as a fascist. He's not a fascist.
He's trying to kill Franco. He gets shot but survives,
and it is given a medal by Franco for his bravery,
which God plays off this medal to spy on fascists
for decades. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, he managed to all

(55:30):
this work in the UK because he's like this, this,
this recognition by Franco allows him to be a communist
spy in the United Kingdom for years. People are fucking wild. Yeah,
it's yeah, this guy's like ping pong ball, Like following
his trajectory is just insane. So Chicken and his unit
spent New Years, he was speaking, sleeping on the hillside

(55:50):
above the town. Soon one in Tenethm would have frost bite.
Local anarchists joined them and they taught the foreign volunteers
taught the local anarchists how to clean their rifles and
Phil Phil sam bags Apparently for some reason, the anarchists
had not been taught and didn't know how to clean
the rifles until this point. Like it's a major bonus
to their operational capability. Yeah yeah, So they moved to

(56:14):
this position like over watching the faster sort of fighting,
and they watched this young unit of Catalan anarchists who
have all arrived in Alpagatas, which are like rope sold sandals,
and they watch these guys attack and allegedly like this
is this incredibly brave thing where they're supposed to retreat
and they refused to retreat. They're not going to leave
their friends behind. And even the German common so the

(56:36):
Germans had this idea of German Thalamon unit in the
International Brigade type, this idea that they were very disciplined
communists and superior to or the other units and superiority anarchists.
And then these Germans like I don't want to say tankies,
but like authoritarian communists, the applaud these anarchists for their
battle in world like okay, So this gets into my
theory that despite the anarchists being incredibly anti Catholic in Spain,

(57:00):
um the fact that they were so die hard. Yes, yeah,
it is not a coincidence that it was a Catholic country.
It is not a coincidence that they all come from
this Catholic heritage. Yeah, and like and even the like
do what's right, not what's safe, you know, that is

(57:21):
like part of the Catholic like, at least the cultural
conception of Catholics is not necessarily church doctrine or whatever.
So I like, I don't think it's a coincidence that
the place where the anarchists are like sometimes not intelligently
throwing themselves at machine gun nests, but you will not
lack for courage space. Yeah. Yeah, it continually keeps happening

(57:43):
that they'll just like keep doing these attacks and will
be like what the fuck, bro, like no, and without
stopping now Yeah, and it is comic and tragic, comic,
but yet this idea of like propaganda of the deed
and like its most political religion, it's it's hard not
to see it. And some of this ship. Yeah, and
so by the end of the battle when they end

(58:04):
up fighting, like in the town house to house, nearly
three hundred of Chicken's unit have died, right, Like it's
an absolute fucking blood bath. Temperatures dropped to below minus
twenty and his Celsius, Yeah, I think it isn't that
roughly where they come together though, Like I don't know,

(58:25):
Sophie's nodding, She's a big temperature understand it. Yeah, I'm
like that sounds right. I trust you. I understand Celsius
between zero and forty outside these extremes, I do not
understand selsias anyway. Okay, it's cold as ship's everyone's getting
for ust bite, everyone's sucking dying. Yeah, at some point
I'll check and have started. He got a leather jacket

(58:49):
from somewhere. You can see he does look stylish as
fucking some of the pictures. He's got a beret, he's
smoking a pipe. Jenny nitted him gloves in a scarf
and sent them to him, and she'll cinema box of
Fannie Farmer chocolates for Christmas apparently. Yeah. Uh. He spent
hours trying to maintain their They had maximum guns, which

(59:09):
are pretty unreliable, more unreliable when you have fucking fascists
pouring sand into them because you're busy posing anarchists, and
that the most in the Ganda rifles that we spoke about.
He also issued them their rations. Found a list of
their rations could interest me. They get a can of
Argentine beef, three loaves of bread, one pack of French cigarettes,
and a jar of apricot jam that was carried like

(59:31):
as a squad. You shared the apricot jam, Yes, pretty
cultured stuff. So they and there backup bell Cheat where
they see the first ever like a blitz Creek style aqueque.
They're basically attacked by like combined tanks, airplanes and infantry right,

(59:51):
which is what becomes blitz Creek. But again because like
the world isn't paying attention, the world continues to be
fucking shocked by this in the and World War, right,
so they end up more or less routed by this
right that they don't know what. Then the world has
never seen this before, and at one point two of
their machine gun crews stranded completely by themselves and end

(01:00:15):
up holding off thousands of soldiers like they're on top
of the set of cliffs. So they're just like firing
until they run out of ammunition, and then they're all
captured and executed. And they don't keep retweet but they
keep retreating. But they couldn't retreat faster than the tanks
and airplanes could move forward to every time they try
and set up to defend somewhere, they'd be overwhelmed and
they'd have to retreat again. They were being basically had

(01:00:38):
their backs to the sea right that they're being chased
towards the ocean, and as this is all happening, they
start to receive the news that Hitter's invaded Austria and
the world still hasn't done anything. So it's got to
have felt like a pretty pretty hopeless time. I've got
a clip here from Tom Page describing what that felt like.
This Tom Page, So Tom Page, sorry, it's it's another

(01:00:59):
of it's another link. A brigade volunteer. He's interviewed for
this film called The Good Fight, which is a fantastic film.
It's on it's on YouTube for free. I want to
play a little bit from him explaining how that felt.
I know, people that want to win slept under a
little bit of scraw no blanket over you, but you're know, no,
when we're in a pair of overalls. It's cold in Spain.

(01:01:24):
It is very cold Spain. But you want to win
and you stay. So yeah, So they were cold, right.
They didn't have anything to eat, didn't have anyone to sleep,
and the nights would get cold in the days. Was
to get up to triple digits, right, and every town
they got to was captured before they arrived. Finally, the

(01:01:44):
very few of them who survived arrived at this town
called casp right, and Casper's supposed to organize a defense
that I told them that they're not allowed to go
back anything. And all of the machine guns that he'd
spent forever trying to fix have been abandoned. And they
were so sort of people who even abandoned their guns
right as an effort to run away. What they started

(01:02:05):
doing was picking up rocks, throwing them over a wall,
and shouting grenade the shot putter re enters the chat. Yeah, yeah,
this is when the shot better returns. They were hoping
that people would like think they were grenades and run away. Yeah.
When I was six, I did the two. Yeah, it's

(01:02:25):
kind of sad that that's where they ended up doing.
Some of his unit were actually injured and then deliberately
run over by an Italian tank. So it really fun.
Terrible ship happens at Cassidy and they end up all
making a stand at the railway station, right, it's where
the end where the last of the mag paps end up.

(01:02:48):
When the railway station was captured, so was out chaken
and it's probably shortly after that that he was executed.
And so I want to talk a little bit about like,
I guess after some of his comrades came back after
the people who have seen this, the people who he
had fought with in Spain came back, they were harassed,
bully chased out of work. Many of them weren't allowed

(01:03:10):
to fight in the Second World War because they were
called premature anti fascist, right, Yeah, that's the best. That's
the best, and it's the best example of how the
United States is not an anti fascist nation. Yes, no,
fu can we Yeah? Okay, yes, you're like the segregated

(01:03:30):
army that fought the Second World War was not an
anti fascist army, Like it isn't inherently not anti fascist
to segregate your military like that, and like, yeah, there
are example is actually a black folks who are extremely
like tactically astute right there. The Abraham Lincoln Battalion, the
American Battalion International Gates was led by a black officer,
and they were like there were black people who were

(01:03:52):
taken to like train military officers at Walter Garland was
one of them, and he was training military officers in
like how to oppose this it's creek stuff that he'd seen.
One of them called him a slur, so he punched
the officer and got like then, so then he got
booted out of his job, right, like then he can't. Yeah,
what's because it's more important to be racist than to

(01:04:14):
learn how to stop a blitz creek. Yeah right, Like
thousands of people probably die because we lost this knowledge,
right because yeah, we have to be definitely short of pricks.
I want to play another clip here where we I'm
gonna let Bill. Bill Bailey, by the way, is a
fantastic human being. He he climbed onto the front of
a German boat that landed in New York, fought off

(01:04:35):
the security guards, and then swipped down the swasticket from
the front of the boat and tore it apart. Yeah,
got the ship kicked into him by NYPD. Well, thousands
of people cheered him a fucking course that also, Yeah,
the fact is that are going to kick the ship
out of you for like, well, you cat. The one
thing that we've learned is that proper vious property is

(01:04:57):
also property. I learned that on Twitter is also violence. Sorry,
oh yeah, and it's the same. It's the same if
someone burns down into Boston clinic or tears up as ustic. Yeah. Yeah,
so I want to pay a little click from Bill Bailey. Yeah,
it was well, it was a hard holding a job down.
It was very difficult. In my particular case, we had
been wiped out of the unions Seagulling Union. We couldn't

(01:05:20):
sail on the ship, we couldn't get Siemens paper, our
siemens papers. Uh Coast Guard. They denied us that on
the basis that we're read had fought in Spain or
something along that line. Every job you went to, no
matter way where I wiped at last a week or
two weeks the most, and then the FBI would hound

(01:05:41):
you and you'd lose your job. And this went on
and on and on and on and on for almost
a period of ten years, really ten years of the stuff.
So the revolutionary must expect all of this type of stuff,
missing meal, losing a job, being checked out of your house,

(01:06:01):
et cetera. I mean that's the way it is. You know,
not always going to be like that. One day we
may change everything we all. So for the last thing
I wanna want to leave you with, I want to
play a clip from Jenny Barman Chacken who was out
chaking his wife, talking about it why he decided to
go explain and how she felt about it. I was proud.

(01:06:24):
I thought it was important from the goal. I was scared.
I was ambivalent. I remember lying awake nights and thinking,
is there any possible reason why maybe I could dig
up a reason why he shouldn't go, you know, is
there something wrong with him physically? Will it be dangerous
for him to go? And so a matter of fact,

(01:06:44):
he did have a disc problem in the knee and
it would slip out and once in a while, you know,
he really had would have to bend over and bring
it back in the line, you know, And I thought
to myself he had been a salmon. He went to
a doctor because that was required of any of the
men who were going to Spain. They really had to

(01:07:05):
have a clean bill of health. And I remember when
he came back and said, doctor said, I'm okay, and
I'm going. And I remember thinking to myself, I wonder
if the doctor knows about that meet me, and maybe
I ought to go and tell the doctor about that me.
And then I thought to myself, you know, if I
do this, I won't live with myself and Chick would

(01:07:26):
never forgive me, And so I didn't. So he went
and we communicated with each other, and I met him
some gloves and I led him a scarf and I
sent them to Spain and he got it, and he
got a box of Fannie Farmer candy, and we got
letters back and forth, and we got some pictures. And

(01:07:46):
when I was to Spain in August, that was a
month after he went, I saw him, spent some time
with him. Uh. And then beginning with January, there was
no mail, and I used to visit the headquarters, you know,
the office of the vets. Was there any information and
there was no information, and uh, I was convinced that

(01:08:10):
it couldn't happen to him, you know, I just couldn't
happen to him. But it did happen, and it was
a hard time for me, and it was hard time
for anybody who lost people in Spain. At the same time,
it was always always been a matter of pride, you know,
we all have to die. And I've always thought that,

(01:08:32):
you know, so you die younger, you die older, If
you die for a good reason, then you know, it's
not that bad. And I have always been able to
live with that. That's so fucking good. Now she just
she nails it. You know, Like it's hard because it's like, yeah,
like she wants to stop him from going, but she

(01:08:55):
she knows it's not right, you know, And that's so
fucking human both. I don't I don't know that just
that makes me kind of teary. Yeah, that one of
that film makes me so sad because there are all
these people who are just more or less right about
everything and incredibly committed to being right and willing to
die or kill for things that it should be universal

(01:09:17):
but aren't, and so many of them just end up
sucking dead. But none of them, none of them ever
backed down from me, Like, no, we were right, it
was right, yeah, and it was all worth it even
if we didn't win. It's really cool. Has anyone as
a tangent, Yeah, has anyone done the work of like

(01:09:38):
because Spain right, like like they tried to have a coup,
like we we lost the Spanish Civil War, right, and
and Spain became fascist for decades. And but Spain also
didn't really get involved too much in World War two
mm hm. And it's to me, not a historian, it
seems like those are related that they had to fight

(01:09:58):
like crazy, like if the coup had just one had
just worked, would Spain have been involved in World War two,
you know, on the fascist side, And like, I mean,
I'm always looking for I'm looking for a version of
the world where like check sacrifice, like like changes the war.
And I don't know if that's true or not, but

(01:10:19):
I mean, yes, Spain was pretty crippled, so they weren't
able to Also, what they would have given to the
fascists would have been less than what it would have
cost him to have another front kind of thing, because
they were by the war. Right, Actually, some of his
comrades came back and were trained of special forces in
the US. And we're supposed to be inserted into Spain
as guerrillas in the event that Spain did join the war.

(01:10:41):
So in that center of Spain had in the U S,
wouldn't have just acquiesced in Franco's dictatorship for decades right
under this sort of fastical anti communism ship. And like
you can read Peter Peter Carroll's book is really good
about this, where he talks about like how the the
volunteers who survived and come back to the United to
dates spend the next until they die, all of them

(01:11:04):
being like why the fund. Are you not doing anything
about Spain? Why are you ignoring Franco's dictatorship? What do
you think about the refugees? Like it defines nearly all
of their lives, right like Alva Bessie, Who's who was
a very successful screenwriter in Hollywood. It's still campaigning for this,
like until until he dies. They almost all that. Yeah,
it's it's really sad to see like a that it's

(01:11:27):
not studied very much and it's largely forgotten and obviously
be like the way the world kind of ignores their
foresight and they're insert into this and like even in
the nineteen fifties right there persecuted like under McCarthyism then
being like now you guys kind of called this and
we're sorry that we didn't listen to you. It can

(01:11:48):
never be there wrong. Yeah, it's sad. They Yeah, they
they're cool and interesting people and encourage folks to read
more about them. That's about all I have for you that. Yeah,
people should you should watch The Good Fight. It's free
on YouTube. So do sports fight Nazis and let your

(01:12:09):
loved ones take risks. Yeah, those are the lessons. Be cool.
If that was like a trathnon you know, or a
pentathlon check a bagpipe in there, and like you give
four sports. See, I just think you should have to
do them all at once, you know, like, oh yeah
I should be mounted, you know women, Yeah, and the

(01:12:34):
bagpipes yep, yeah, yeah, wow, that would be strenuous. You know.
It's not for the faint of heart. No, yeah, yeah,
it doesn't have to be for everyone. Yeah, it just
has to be for you. Listen, you know what is
for everyone? Though? What's that, Sophie you? Oh yeah, yeah,

(01:12:55):
you know it's not for everyone. Actually it's my fucking
book because it costs an obscene amount of money. I've
got it written down somewhere here. It's a lot of dollars.
So libraries are for everyone. I would love it if
you would go to your library and asked him if
they could maybe obtain a copy of my book about
the Popu Olympics, which is called the Popular Front and
the Barcelona Si Popular Olympics. Yeah, that's my plugable comparing

(01:13:20):
and it as a hard to follow. That's the name
of your book. And then then but I don't a
bit his Escape from Insull Island. It's a similar vibe.
It's a yeah in a way. Sure. Yeah, if the
insults have been in Spain, we all know what fucking

(01:13:41):
team they'd have been. On the other day, I was
on the phone with James, and James literally says to
me on the phone, were actually and I was doing
a voice it was that. And that's my version of
in a way And and and technically people can still

(01:14:06):
pre order or if you're this is the future, order
order the order your book. Yeah, you can either pre
order or regular order it. Um. If it's pre order,
you gotta get it on Tangled Wilderness dot work, which
means if you're listening to this when it came out,
you probably got to get it there. But if not,
you can get it wherever books are sold. Probably. That's
the fun thing about like small presses that work with
major distributors is that it is available wherever books are sold.

(01:14:31):
But that doesn't mean anyone will necessarily have it, So
you can also go to a library. Um, because actually
small press books are really expensive. Right now. It's a
very short book. You can read it in an afternoon,
but it is a twenty dollar book because the fucking
economics and inflation and blah blah blah blah blah, that
is totally what you all, okay, checked into this podcast
to hear me talk about. Is the economic book publishing. Yeah,

(01:14:54):
maybe if there's a coup and a subsequent revolution, you
could get Margaret's book for free. That's it's true. You
can also probably come up with the way my book
for free, especially if certain places carry it. But you
know whatever, um use your imagination, yea libraries. Cool People

(01:15:17):
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