The origin of the International Brigades

 
   Maurice Thorez, who was the French Communist Party leader, had the idea of getting volunteers together to help the spanish Republic to defeat the troops leadered by Francisco Franco. He suggested it to Willi Münzenberg, the chief of Comintern propaganda for Western Europe, who  proposed it in Moscow in September 1936.
 

Italian and French Communist Parties begun to set up a column at the end of September, choosing the ex-leader of Italian Communist Youth, Luigi Longo, to make the necessary arrangements with the Spanish government. The Soviet Ministry of Defense helped too, as there had been something similar to International Brigades in the Russian Civil War. At first, Francisco Largo Caballero, Prime Minister and Minister of War of the Socialist Party in Spain, didn’t like the idea. But after a while, he ended up accepting the volunteers on 22nd October.
 

The main recruitment centre was established in Paris, its supervisor was Polish communist colonel Karol Swierczewski. On 17th October 1936 Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published an open letter to José Díaz in Mundo Obrero saying that the fight against fascists was not just a matter of Spaniards, but also a problem of the whole world.

In a few days, the International Brigades were founded in most of the countries of Europe. All of them were controlled by the Commintern (more or less).

The head office was in Paris, where the brigadists were provided of assistance, money and passports when they came from Eastern Europe. The volunteers went from France to Spain by ship or train (“train of the volunteers”, “train numer 77”). Some of them went by themselves.

They were under no contract,  nor defined engagement period. This would be a problem later.

Once they were in Spain, they were sent to the base in Albacete. Luigi Longo had visited Albacete the 12th October to see where the volunteers were going to sleep and eat. He realised thet there wasn’t space enough, so the first ones would have to sleep on  straw on the floor.