ABSTRACT
Three thousand Americans crossed the Atlantic to Spain, and the average volunteer was a man between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-seven who lived in an industrial, urban center where labor unions and radical political parties were most active. Most men involved in the organizational struggles of America's blue-collar workers had seen friends killed or injured, or had been hurt themselves. Socialist and Anarchist, Communist or just plain liberal, all believed that the rise of the right in Europe was a threat to the workingman of America and all saw the war as a means of hitting back at the fascism they abhorred. Young non-Communist liberals who went to Spain were the same people who in another era would be going on freedom rides, registering Negro voters in Mississippi, or demonstrating against the Vietnam war. They were probably too individualistic to accept the discipline of the Communist Party rather than wise enough to criticize its basic premises.
