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On July 18, 1936, the Spanish Civil War began and so too did the legend of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It became the designation given to the nearly 3,000 mostly American volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War, with almost 700 making the ultimate sacrifice. They fought on the Republican side, in defense of the democratically elected government of Spain, and against the Nationalists, the military rebels led by Gen. Francisco Franco who was supported by both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Into the Republican camp came idealistic freedom fighters from around the world. More than 35,000 volunteers poured into
Spain from 52 countries to take up arms against the Nationalists. They sacrificed life and limb in a country they knew little about, for a people they had never met. You might consider them romantics, fighting in a doomed cause for something greater than their self-interest.
But they weren’t just romantics, they were visionaries. Willing to risk it all, so that future generations would be free. At the time, they showed the Spanish Republic and people around the world that Spain was not fighting fascism alone, and given what was going on in the world, that was a powerful message.
Yet, history has a funny way of repeating itself. After years of serving in smoldering occupations, trying to spread democracy in places that had only a tepid interest in it, many Americans are hungry for what they see as a righteous fight to defend freedom against an autocratic aggressor and are heading to Ukraine in droves to fight.
A representative of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington reported that 3,000 U.S. volunteers have responded to the nation’s appeal for people to serve in an international battalion that will help resist Russia’s invading forces. One of them is a former Marine combat veteran named Dennis Diaz, who served from 2000 to 2018. “If I were to die over there in Ukraine, then guess what? My children will know that I paid the highest price to be able to stand up and fight for what’s right,” Diaz said.
President Zelenskyy has inspired his country and the world in a way that we haven’t seen since the days of Churchill. In a line seemingly straight out of Hollywood, when offered help by President Biden in escaping a besieged city, President Zelenskyy was said to have replied: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Zelenskyy reminds me of the one who chooses honor over surrender and who fights for an idea of his country even when the reality is impossibly bleak. Here is a nation and a leader willing to sacrifice so much for the principle of independence and the right to join the Western world.
As this new Lincoln Brigade forms before our eyes, Americans and people from around the world will head over to fight for a country and people they have never met, a fight that is technically not their own, all beset against impossible odds, for an idea that is greater than them.
In October of 1938, the Republic threw a farewell parade in Barcelona for the Lincoln Brigade and other international volunteers, five months before their fall. The parliamentary deputy known as La Pasionaria told the soldiers: “You can go proudly. You are history. You are legend.” President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people are in the fight of their lives, but it is important for them to know that they will not be in this fight alone.