Investigators confirmed the names of 212 fighters from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, according to a government statement issued Sunday. About 102 of the fighters are of German origin, 70 Austrian and 40 Dutch. The government gave no information on how many people of other nationalities have been identified.
The identified combatants were part of the International Brigades, military units created by the Communist International to confront the fascist forces of General Francisco Franco. Around 40,000 foreign men and women volunteered, fighting alongside the forces of the democratic Second Spanish Republic and against the rise of fascism in Europe in the late 1930s.
The findings are based on a year of research into records kept in documentary archives in Spain and Russia. The investigators reviewed the daily lists of casualties and missing soldiers compiled by officers of the International Brigades.
The names of the privates were frequently omitted from the lists, making the investigative process difficult. These lists are in the Russian State Archive of Sociopolitical History in Moscow. The researchers also delved into the main archives on the Spanish Civil War located in Spain.
Using cross-referenced documents, the investigators were also able to identify the likely area where the soldiers were killed or seriously injured. It is an important step to locate their remains within mass graves located throughout the country.
This investigation provides “very valuable information that gives us the opportunity to contact the families of the disappeared combatants and, in the future, intervene in the mass graves that have been located,” said Alfons Aragoneses, in charge of the project.
All those who have been identified were part of the Thälmann Brigade, a communist unit made up largely of anti-Nazi Germans. The battalion was active on the Ebro River front in northeastern Spain between March and September 1938, the site of the longest and deadliest battle of the war.
The research is ongoing and is financed by the regional government of Catalonia, in order to contribute to the historical memory of the country. The second phase of the project will attempt to identify missing militiamen from Britain, Ireland, Canada and the United States. The final step will require opening the tombs for corpses.
Historians estimate that close to 10,000 foreign volunteers died in combat on Spanish soil during the war. It is unknown how many have not yet been identified, buried in graves.
The Spanish Civil War served as a testing ground for Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy before World War II. This sparked an international call to try to save the democratic government of the Republic, which finally succumbed to Franco in 1939.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
