To Defend Democracy: Eyewitness Letters and Diaries from the Spanish Civil War

In the spring of 1937, a young man from a small town in rural Ohio sat down in a Spanish barracks to write a letter home. Carl Geiser, born to a deeply religious German-speaking family that had recently emigrated from Switzerland, had defied the neutrality laws of the United States and traveled across the Atlantic to fight in a war that was not his own. His letter, along with thousands of others, became part of the extraordinary documentary record of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)—a conflict that drew volunteers from more than fifty countries to the battlefields of Spain. The war was widely seen as the first great stand against fascism. As the editors of Women’s Voices from the Spanish Civil War observed, “Perhaps more than any other war in the twentieth century, the Spanish Civil War was seen as a ‘writers’ war”—names such as Hemingway and Orwell spring to mind. But the men and women who actually fought, nursed, and wrote about it left behind an archive of letters, diaries, and memoirs that reveal what it was like to be alive at that moment.

What Happened?

The Spanish Civil War began on July 17, 1936, when General Francisco Franco and his allies rose against the democratically elected Republic. The rebellion quickly escalated into a full-scale war, splitting Spain into two camps: the Nationalists, backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and the Republicans, who defended the elected government. The conflict internationalized rapidly. Beginning in 1936, the Communist International organized the International Brigades—a volunteer force of roughly 35,000 men and women from over fifty countries. Among them were the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, whose letters were later collected in Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade From the Spanish Civil War (Routledge, 1996).

• July 1936: Franco’s rising against the Republic.
• February 1937: The Battle of Jarama, the first major engagement for the Lincoln Brigade.
• 1937–1938: Training, reserve duty, and repeated battles across Spain.
• April 1939: Franco’s victory and the end of the war.

How It Was Seen at the Time

For the volunteers, the war was a moral crusade. The letters collected in Madrid 1937 are organized under the heading “Why We Went,” revealing the motivations that drove men and women to leave their homes. The British volunteers, analyzed by James K. Hopkins in Into the Heart of the Fire (Stanford University Press, 1998), came from a wide range of intellectual and social backgrounds—from “Oxbridge aesthetes” to “militants from the factories, the mines, and the ranks of the unemployed.”

The prevailing mood was one of urgent optimism. The war was believed to be a test case for democracy itself. As the Women’s Voices anthology notes, the war attracted novelists, poets, and journalists to the front lines, producing an extraordinary body of eyewitness writing.

Historical Snapshot

Eyewitness Accounts

The letters and diaries of the International Brigades are among the most powerful primary sources of the war. The Madrid 1937 collection, edited by Cary Nelson and Jefferson Hendricks, traces the full arc of the American volunteer experience: from “Why We Went” and “Journey to Spain” to “Jarama,” “In Spanish Towns and Cities,” “In Training and in Reserve,” “In Battle,” “The Medical Services,” “Madrid,” “Politics,” “The Regiment de Tren,” “In Battle Again,” “In Training Again,” “The Last Campaign,” “Barcelona,” and “On the Way Home.”

These accounts reveal the daily life of the volunteers—the training camps, the reserve billets, the battles, the medical services, and the political debates that animated the ranks. They show young men and women who were often idealistic, deeply committed, and profoundly shaped by the Great Depression.

Letters & Diaries

The letters of Carl Geiser, published as Letters from the Spanish Civil War (Kent State University Press, 2013), provide a unique perspective. Geiser was born in a small town in rural Ohio and came from a deeply religious German-speaking family that had recently emigrated from Switzerland. The onset of the Great Depression exposed him to the economic and political crises that drove him to volunteer. His letters are, in the words of the publisher, “a candid description of warfare at one of the first battlefields of World War II.”

Women’s letters were equally important. Women’s Voices from the Spanish Civil War (Lawrence & Wishart) brings together extracts from memoirs, letters, diaries, and poems by women from Britain, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand—from “unsung nurses and relief workers” to internationally celebrated writers. The anthology redresses a balance: the war has often been told through male voices, but women were present as nurses, soldiers, and writers, and their accounts are essential to understanding the conflict.

Different Perspectives

American Volunteers

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade letters show a distinctly American perspective. Young men and women from across the United States, many from immigrant families, saw the war as a fight for democracy. Their letters trace the journey from the United States to the battlefields, the training camps, and the battles themselves, revealing a strong sense of solidarity with the Spanish people.

British Volunteers

James K. Hopkins’s Into the Heart of the Fire examines the British volunteers, placing them in a “broad intellectual, political, social, and cultural framework.” The British contingent ranged from Oxbridge intellectuals to working-class militants from the factories, mines, and the ranks of the unemployed. Their letters and diaries reveal a wide range of motivations, from ideological commitment to personal experience of the Depression.

Women’s Voices

Women who went to Spain—nurses, relief workers, and soldiers—have often been forgotten. Their letters, diaries, and memoirs record the daily life of the medical services, the relief efforts, and the social and political changes of the war. The Women’s Voices anthology provides a “moving overview” of the war from the perspective of women participants.

How Historians See It Today

Modern scholarship has re-read the Spanish Civil War through these primary sources. The publication of the Lincoln Brigade letters in 1996, the British study in 1998, and the women’s anthology in the 2000s have redressed a war that was once told from the top down. Historians now recognize the war as a “volunteers’ war” and a “writers’ war,” where the letters, diaries, and memoirs of ordinary individuals are as important as official documents.

The historiographical shift has also broadened the war’s frame: it is now understood not only as a Spanish conflict but as the first battle of a wider global war against fascism. The volunteers’ letters, once seen as marginal, are now central to understanding how ordinary people experienced the rise of fascism and the meaning of commitment.

Related Primary Sources

• Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade From the Spanish Civil War (Routledge, 1996), edited by Cary Nelson and Jefferson Hendricks.
• Letters from the Spanish Civil War (Kent State University Press, 2013), by Peter N. Carroll and Fraser Ottanelli—the letters of Carl Geiser.
• Women’s Voices from the Spanish Civil War (Lawrence & Wishart)—an anthology of women’s memoirs, letters, diaries, and poems.
• Into the Heart of the Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford University Press, 1998), by James K. Hopkins.

These letters are more than historical documents; they are the voices of men and women who chose to fight fascism. The Spanish Civil War was not only a political event but a human experience, lived in the barracks, the hospitals, and the streets of Madrid. The eyewitness accounts of the International Brigades teach us that the past is not a distant abstraction but a world of real people with real hopes, fears, and commitments—and that their words still speak to us today.