Wolff in Wolf 's Clothing
SCHWARTZ, STEPHEN
Wolff in Wolf ’s Clothing Death of a Stalinist. BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ Berkeley, Calif. The affection of the media for the “official” leftist narrative on the totalitarian crimes of the 20th...
...he liked to be called by the Spanish nickname el Lobo, the wolf...
...The Times eulogized Wolff as an “AntiFranco Leader,” calling him “the last commander of the American volunteers who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War and the longtime commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade...
...Serving the Allies in the Second World War would not have been dishonorable, making it the exception in a life marked most prominently by his assistance to Stalin in the betrayal Stephen Schwartz is the author (with Victor Alba) of Spanish Marxism vs...
...He quoted Hemingway on Wolff: “as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg...
...Wolff said he was turned down for combat duty in World War II because of concerns about his leftist politics...
...You can learn all about it in a book called Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, published 70 years ago...
...of the Spanish Republic...
...The International Brigades recruited and sent by the Soviets to Spain were a political militia intended to extend Russian infl uence over local forces fi ghting for their survival...
...Eventually, the Americans were used as police against Spanish leftists who resented Soviet manipulation...
...The gap between most of the foreigners who went to Spain to fi ght, their persistent admirers, and the authentic historical memory of the Spanish people is wide...
...The “Lincoln veterans” sealed themselves in a mental sarcophagus of Stalinist propaganda and never effectively dissented from it...
...On his website (ourworld.compuserve.com/ homepages/karlahuebner/milt/milt...
...Soviet Communism: A History of the POUM...
...Wolff died in Berkeley, where I happened to be visiting...
...In this way the IB more resembled Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps than, say, the Flying Tigers— American pilots who fl ew Chinese aircraft against Japan...
...Martin writes, “Mr...
...But thanks to the ignorance of the American media, Milton Wolff went to his death grinning with glee, knowing he had escaped accountability and kept his audience fooled...
...He saw and reported on the reality of Soviet betrayal of the Spanish Republicans— which turned out to be a prelude to Stalin’s pact with Hitler...
...He was a lifelong defender of the Soviet role in the Spanish Civil War and of the Moscow-created International Brigades (IB) in which he served...
...Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 was one such atrocity...
...There was not in fact any “Lincoln Brigade” in the Spanish Republican army, as the Times’s obituarist is careful to note—the mistaken nomenclature is a common piece of Stalinist puffery...
...He joined the militia of the POUM, an anti-Stalinist movement with deep roots among the Catalans...
...Milton Wolff and his cohort loathed Orwell and would bear no mention of him, even after the city of Barcelona dedicated a monument to the English truth-teller...
...Their view of the Spanish war as an evergreen source of liberalradical fantasies was reaffirmed on January 17, in reporting the death of Milton Wolff, aged 92...
...The phenomenon has continued: the Sandinista war in Nicaragua was completely different from its perception in the U.S...
...But the obituarists at the New York Times seem not to have cracked their copy yet...
...it could be designated the fi rst example of a war with two realities—one in Spain and another in London and Manhattan...
...The New York Times noted that Wolff “fought successfully against the ‘subversive’ label pinned on the Lincoln veterans for decades...
...htm), Wolff stated that he “managed to see action in Italy and Burma...
...The latter action, if it took place (el Lobo was always a fabulist), was appalling...
...Still, one wonders what to make of the Times’s having overlooked the most interesting “fact” about Wolff: his claimed service with the Offi ce of Strategic Services, precursor to the CIA, in the Second World War...
...Unrepentant Stalinist would have been more accurate and more concise...
...Orwell was the exception among the foreigners who fl ocked to Spain...
...Martin further praised Wolff for opposing U.S...
...The affection of the media for the “official” leftist narrative on the totalitarian crimes of the 20th century appears permanent and incorrigible...
...In reality, Wolff ’s group, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade or VALB, was always known as the hardest-core Stalinophilic entity among the Spanish Civil War veterans, most of whom shunned it...
...media, as is much of the Iraq war...
...The Times’s obituarist, Douglas Martin, described Wolff wielding a machine gun at 21 and fi ghting in the mountains late in the hostilities...
...recognition of the Franco regime and for his volunteering the aged American veterans of the International Brigades as soldiers to Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam war...
...I knew Wolff well...
...The American participants in the “Abraham Lincoln Battalion” and other “green” units of the IB were notable for their lack of training or wartime experience—especially when compared with French, German, and Slavic veterans of the First World War, who joined the IB in much larger numbers...
Vol. 13 • January 2008 • No. 19
