Thälmann Battalion

As Robert Garland Colodny wrote in The International Brigades: John Cornford, an English communist and poet, echoed these thoughts, describing the Germans as: Ernest Hemingway, the American writer, described them as follows: Until December 1936 the battalion boasted a significant British contingent, including Winston Churchill's nephew, Esmond Romilly; however, many of them were killed fighting to defend Madrid in the early months of the war.

Many of them had been stripped of their nationality by the Nazis, and had spent years underground or in exile, and the war gave them the opportunity to reclaim an anti-fascist identity, their vision of a better Germany.

[19] However, the German volunteers were not above human faults and despair – especially as the war dragged on, and got increasingly difficult for the Republican side, which lacked the plentiful supplies and superior organisation of their Nationalist opponents.

Records show that about one tenth of the volunteers eventually found themselves imprisoned at least for a certain duration for crimes like desertion, breaking discipline, or for political reasons as the Stalinist tendency in the Brigades increased (usually being accused of Trotskyism).

It is said that Tito ordered that it not be engaged in combat against German Army units (the Partisans also fought Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovenian and Serbian forces.)