L'Espoir Guidait leurs Pas : Les Volontaires Francais dans les Brigades Internationales, 1936-1939, by Remi Skoutelski, Paris : Grasset, 1998 (ISBN 2-246-55561-2), 411 pages, 9 maps (6 are battles or frontlines in Spain, 3 are geographic data on French volunteers and the Communist Party), full index of persons named, chronology, extensive bibliography. Recommended retail price in France is 157 francs (about £ 16 or $28 US) and well worth it.

This book is based on the author's doctorate thesis and makes extensive use of primary sources. The archives used include those of the French police, Foreign Office and Communist Party, Spanish Army and PSOE, Society of Nations and most notably those of the International Brigades and Comintern held in Moscow. As a result, there is a great amount of new material on French volunteers in the International Brigades but also on the overall organisation of the Brigades, from their creation to their political, military and disciplinary organisation in Spain.

At the heart of the book is of course a detailed study of the French volunteers based on numerous interviews with French veterans, Brigade newspapers and administrative reports and on the biographical questionnaires filled by some 3,900 volunteers (out of about 9,000 Frenchmen) which the author found in the Moscow archives. This has allowed R‚mi Skoutelski to draw a rather reliable sociological portrait of the French contingent :- rather mature : the average age is 29 years and 9 months (much older than the American or Swiss contingent for instance), only 25% are younger than 25 and 50% fall in the 26-36 age bracket, a least a quarter are married ;- overwhelmingly working class : more than 92% are workers (and 80% are industrial workers) which is no surprise but tends to qualify the popular image of a war best remembered for the physical commitment of intellectuals such as Malraux or Orwell relatively experienced in military matters : few volunteers from the sample had not completed their national service in the French army, 28 held commissions and more than 300 were NCOs, 55 had served in the Foreign Legion and about 70 had at least 5 years of military experience.

Most were relatively new to the Communist Party : although 80% were members or sympathisers of a left-wing party, trade union or movement, only about 55% were party members on their arrival in Spain and, of these, more than half joined between 1934 and 1938 (excluding those that joined in Spain).

In addition, the author also covers areas such the volunteers'motivation for joining the brigades, daily life in a mainly static war, relations with the Spanish population and other contingents, morale and desertion but also the volunteers' experience of return to France, ending with an epilogue on their role in the WW2 resistance and the Cold War politics in France. Also studied are the French Communist Party's recruitment policies, methods and results and the "secret railroad", the clandestine network set up to bring foreign volunteers to and across the Spanish border. Although it's main focus is on the IB, it also deals briefly with the Espa¤a squadron or French and other foreign volunteers in the various militias.

The second aspect of the book is much wider than the French volunteers themselves and deals with the organisation of the International Brigades from their creation to their political, military and disciplinary practices in Spain.

Thanks to the IB and Comintern archives (including part of Andre Marty's private papers), the author offers many useful insights on the internal workings of both organisations. Particularly interesting is the very improvised and haphazard process leading to the creation of the Brigades: the author identifies the formal decision to found the Brigades as the 18 September 1936 meeting of the Secretariat of the Comintern's Executive but shows that this followed both the spontaneous initiatives of several communist parties, notably the French, and the USSR's decision to extend military help to the Republic (according to Skoutelski, the Comintern archives show no trace of the 26 July meeting in Prague which Andreu Castells mentions and considers that it probably never took place).

Likewise, the author analyses the internal administrative organisation of the Brigades, which he shows to be largely improvised and less than professional until mid-1937 at the earliest. The Communist Party's political activity within the Brigades is also covered as are the officer selection process and functions of the political commissars. The political repression within and by the International Brigades is also treated : while he is not tender with Andre Marty, the author does qualify somewhat the role of the "butcher of Albacete". From his study, Skoutelski comes to the conclusion that while the International Brigades were an army controlled by the Comintern, they were never the army of the Comintern.

Finally, the book ends with a chapter on the number of International Brigades foreign volunteers in Spain which, from IB documents, is estimated as a cumulative number of 32;000 with no more than 15,000 in action at the same time. Of these, 5,000 died or went missing in Spain, including about 2,300 Frenchmen. The highest toll however, was paid by the Spanish members of the Brigades with 8,000 dead or missing.

While the author is clearly sympathetic towards the International Brigades, and acknowledges this in his foreword, this book is of high academic quality and every assertion or quotation is fully referenced in numerous footnotes. L'Espoir Guidait leurs Pas is clearly a landmark in the history of the French role in the International Brigades and I recommend it highly. Its most serious drawback is that, for the moment at least, it exists only in French.

This book contains a lot of new information (including a projected French North African brigade for instance) and is a pretty good read too which doesn't hurt.

Book Reviews

Two SCW Books
L'Aviation de Chasse de la Republique Espagnole
L'Espoir Guidait leurs Pas : Les Volontaires Francais dans les Brigades Internationales