Democracy betrayed: from Spain 1936 to 2006

[November 30, 2006]

Danish International Brigade volunteer Leo Kari wrote the preface to his friend and fellow brigadist Gustaf Munch-Petersen’s book of poems, “Selected Poems”, published posthumously (1). Gustaf’s last written words were jotted down the day before his death, on March 28, 1938. He was fighting on the Spanish battlefield by the Ebro River, in Aragón. These words are the foreword to the poems.

“The whole world is one front—for or against that lovely life which humans could live—where one and all, wherever one is, must understand that, despite all strife, (life) is so precious and great that it shall be saved, cost what it must;—that nothing can any longer have meaning if that is lost on earth. –We must learn, at the very least, that that reality, which our life demands, requires the greatest struggle and the biggest sacrifice of us.”

This holistic view of the world expresses the consciousness of 60,000 men and women of that generation, those who offered their lives to save Spain from fascism. About one-third of them died on Spain’s many battlefields, or at the hands of fascist torturers, or dying of wounds in hospitals.

Six hundred thousand Spaniards and foreign invaders died during the 1936-39 war against Spain’s democratic Republic. In the first five years of Franco’s dictatorial rule, 200,000 more Spaniards were murdered by fascist torturers. According to the Minister of Justice in Franco’s government, assassinations were recorded as executions or deaths in concentration camps. After the end of World War 11, several thousand more Spaniards were murdered by the time Franco died on November 20, 1975.

“The fascists knew that the majority of the Spanish people opposed them, and [the fascists] openly called for…`healthy terrorism´,” wrote Spanish professor and award-winning author Vicente Navarro (2).

Even at the end of Franco, Francoism continued under the proceeding “democratic” governments. An amnesty was immediately granted all the assassins and torturers. A “pact of silence” was agreed upon, including the horrendous crimes of the Franco regime. The deaths of tens of thousands of anti-fascist Spaniards and the 30,000 “disappeared” remain unrecognized. This is why it wasn’t until 1996 that the Spanish parliament finally granted honorary citizenship to all remaining brigadists during the 60th commemoration. Even today, many churches maintain monuments celebrating the fascist July 1936 coup and its ensuing war.

Many of the survivors from Spain continued fighting in their own lands with the knowledge and ideal that “the whole world is one front”.

But they could not stop the fascist machine alone. Within just one year of the fascist take-over in Spain, Nazi Germany captured and occupied Czechoslovakia (March 15, 1939); much of Poland (September 1); Denmark and Norway (April 9, 1940); Holland, Belgium and France (between May 10 and June 25, 1940).

“They had come to Spain to fight fascism with open eyes when so many others could not see or didn’t want to see. Those who fought fascism also watched it grow. Who will be next? If they didn’t stop fascism in Spain, would it not come to their own land,” said Alan Christiansen, organizer of Denmark’s Friends of the International Brigades Association and co-arranger of 70th year commemorations.

Denmark was taken so easily that Hitler made it a rest and recuperation area for his troops. Nazism was embraced by all the bourgeois parties and their ally, the Social Democrats (SD). Already at the end of 1938, when the Danish volunteers were returning from Spain, the Social Democratic government sent its police to the train station to arrest them. But not many were arrested, or held long in jail, because they were embraced as heroes by many Danes. But Denmark was split. Many joined with the Nazis, even fighting on the Russian front later on.

On the day after Germany occupied Denmark, the mainstream political parties—SD, Radikal Venstre, Venstre and Konservativ—formed a collaborationist coalition government under Nazi Germany’s ultimate control. Social Democrat Thorvald Stauning was made prime minister. Stauning was replaced by the SD finance minister, Vilhelm Buhl, when he died in May 1942.

Denmark’s Spanish veterans start the resistance

It wasn’t long before Spanish war veterans and the Communist party started the first resistance group, KOPA (Communist Partisans), which soon changed its name to DAPA (Danish Partisans). In 1943, the resistance took on the name BOPA (Citizen Partisans), in order to attract a more popular front. Following the mostly spontaneous strikes in August, BOPA stepped up its sabotage actions and assisted most Danish Jews in fleeing to Sweden.

Leo Kari was one of the first to join the resistance. The three Nielsen brothers, Harald, Kaj and Aage, their friend Hans Petersen, and Villy Fuglsang were among the first resisters (3).

Just before Villy died, in September 2005, the last of the Danish veterans of Spain to die, he said:
“They said we were adventurers, but we were not. That was obvious shortly afterwards when Denmark was occupied. A resistance must be built and so they [we] joined in again. They knew what war was, and what it costs. Nevertheless, the Spanish war volunteers joined in.” (4)

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941, the German “governor” of Denmark demanded of the collaborationist government the names of 67 Spanish war vets and Communist party members. They were to be interned. Villy Fulgsang was one of the first interned at Horserød concentration camp. So energetically helpful was the Stauning government that, on November 7, 1942, it had its police arrest 86 Spanish war vets. Within a few days the figure grew to 125. In all, there were 300 interned. By the end of the war, nearly 1000 had sat in that concentration camp. (5)

On August 29, 1943, the Danish government officially dissolved itself due to the massive uprising of striking Danes. But many of the political party leaders continued collaboration until May 5, 1945 on victory day. On September 29, 1943, Germans kicked the Danish police out of Horserød (many were arrested on suspicion of aiding the resistance) and took control of the camp but not before 92 prisoners managed to escape.

One hundred and fifty prisoners, including Fulgsang, were eventually shipped to Stuffhof concentration camp in Germany. A score died there. Fulgsang was not freed until victory was achieved and after he had barely survived the infamous “death march” through Pommern, in February-March 1945.

Hans Petersen was also arrested. He was sentenced to death, but this doom was later commuted and he was sent to Dreibergen prison in Germany. He survived the rest of the war in prison.

Aage Nielsen was not so fortunate. He was arrested, in September 1943, on information provided by an alleged friend. Nazi guards tried to get names of his comrades from him under torture. Instead of complying, he died at their hands. Harald found the informant and shot him dead. Harald and Kaj continued sabotage actions and both were wounded in a fire-fight with Danish police, in November. Despite Harald’s lung injury and Kaj’s leg injury, they were able to make it to Sweden. Swedish police arrested them and put them under guard in a hospital. Upon recovery, they were jailed until the end of the war. Swedish authorities had feared their determination, as they did other Danish saboteurs. They might just sabotage Sweden’s “neutrality” with Germany by blowing up mutually beneficial railroad transportation.

With the formal dissolution of the Danish government, the Frihedsråd (Freedom Council) was formed, in September 1943, to direct all four of the underground resistance groups. A few Social Democrats were, by then, also fighting alongside communists, who were the main force in the resistance. In addition, there were a few Left Radicals (Radical Venstre) and Conservatives. Frode Jakobsen was chosen as leader, mainly because he was a member of SD, in the all-too-trusting belief that upon an eventual victory, the Communist Party (DKP) could convince the Social Democrats to form a popular front alliance.

As it became obvious that the war would be won by the allies, Denmark’s bourgeois parties struck a deal with the Freedom Council, as its activists were still sabotaging the war effort.

When Denmark was liberated, most Danes embraced the Spanish war veterans and their comrades in the resistance as heroes. Nevertheless, the new “liberation government” made no official recognition of their loyalty to democracy. The bourgeois party leaders in the new government did call them heroes whereas they had so recently duped them “terrorists”.

The Freedom Council-Bourgeois parties’ deal established 18 ministries to be divided evenly among the two factions. The Social Democrats took four posts, including the prime ministry. Inexplicably that was Vilhelm Buhl, who, as the Nazi’s collaborationist prime minister, had called the freedom fighters terrorists and turned them over to the Nazis.

The Conservatives and Venstres received two ministry posts each and the Radicals received one. Although Venstre means left in English, and the Radicals are called Radical Left, both parties are solidly capitalist, as is the Conservative party, and today stand for neo-liberal and war policies.

The four resistance groups’ nine minister posts included two for the Communist party (traffic and one without portfolio), and other freedom fighters held the foreign and justice ministries. Frode Jakobsen, albeit a Social Democrat, was given a ministry post without portfolio as one of the resistance folk.

Within a few weeks of liberation, 13,500 Danish Nazis and collaborators were tried for treason; 46 were executed. But few of the top Danish Nazi collaborators were convicted or even tried. Now was the time for mending differences.

Despite an equal number of government ministry posts, the collaborationists were able to neutralize the resistance groups more radical policies by making compromises on some concrete matters. For this, the resistance leaders accepted the collaborationists desire to be officially considered as “co-fighters” with the resistance under the Nazi occupation, claiming their government positions were civil service posts oriented to save Danish lives.

During the first post-war elections, October 28, the DKP won 18 mandates in the parliament, its largest number ever before or since. One of them was Villy Fulgsang. He sat in the parliament until 1960, with a two-year break, and again from 1973 to 1979.

Egon Højlund (3), another Danish brigadist in Spain, had been a Social Democrat, but in 1973 came into parliament on the even more conservative Center Democrat ticket.

Hans Petersen worked for many years as a machinist. Harald Nielsen remained a butcher. Kaj went from job to job and then, in 1954, left Denmark. He traveled around Europe as skipper of a river craft. In 1979, he returned to Denmark sick. He died a few days later.

Leo Kari returned to Spain in 1950. He was once again shocked to see the brutality of Franco fascism visited upon the working class and old comrades. Depressed, he took his life in 1976.

Although Stauning was a collaborationist responsible for the murder or imprisonment of thousands of Danish citizens, including Leo and Villy, and the brothers Nielsen, he is still officially honored as one of the ten greatest Danes, and the media claims him as a father of democracy.

Where are we headed?

FIFTY MILLION murders are on the hands of fascists and their bourgeois collaborators, the leaders of the Danish government, the “non-interventionists” English and French and United States governments and those capitalist firms they represented.

Today, their political progeny keep up the same war-for-profit policies. Anton Nielsen put it this way in his October 28 speech:

“Denmark is no longer occupied, but is itself an occupying power. Under the pretense of desiring to fight terrorism, they spread terror against the Afghan and Iraqi peoples. The slaughter seems without end, the same as does the hypocrisy that they daily expose us to. Their propaganda drums beat. Bush, Blair, Fogh (6)—democracy’s highest warriors. Freedom defenders. The New World Order prophets…

“Terrorism shall be fought with all resources, so they establish a police state in Denmark…[They started] the war with lies…Young Danish men are sent to war with lies…They die in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the murderers sit in Chrisitansborg!”

Those who fought fascism in the 1930s and 1940s fought for a cause greater than themselves. Millions died. That idealism is rare in contemporary times in the “First World”, yet there are some who fight for justice and against oppression, and our numbers are growing. If we didn’t fight, we would all live under even more oppression than we do today.

In 1989, one of Fogh Rasmussen’s heroes, Ronald Reagan, was sending US green berets and US paid Nicaraguan mercenaries across the Honduran border to torture and murder Nicaraguan civilians in ways as gruesome as those executed by the Moors and fascists in Spain. As Nicaragua’s democracy was being butchered, Harald Nielsen was chosen by the “Danish Volunteers of Spain Association” to give greetings to La Pasionaria on her 90th birthday.

He wrote:

“We thank you for your lifetime efforts for freedom, peace and democracy. Your performance was an inspiration for us as we fought in the International Brigade, one we will never forget.”

Dolores Ibárruri (La Pasionaria) had spoken to Harald and 13,000 other departing internationalists, on November 1, 1938. She referred to those who died in this way:

“They gave us everything—their youth or their maturity: their science or their experience; their blood and their lives; their hopes and aspirations—and they asked us for nothing. But yes, it must be said, they did want a post in battle; they aspired to the honor of dying for us.”

NOTES:

1. “Selected Poems” published in 1962 by Gyldendal, Copenhagen.

2. “The Spanish Civil War, 70 Years On: The Deafening Silence on Franco’s Genocide,” published by counterpunch.org, July 19, 2006.

3. See my axisoflogic article, “Commemorating the Danish Vets of the 1936-39 War for Spain”, which describes their fight in Spain.

4. As reported by the Danish left-wing daily, “Arbejderen” (The Worker), October 28, 2006.

5. In 1935, the SD created a secret organization—HIPA—to spy on and register Communists and other anti-capitalist activists. They even paid the Post Office for the names of those who had subscriptions to the Communist newspaper. HIPA was also in the overall association of unions (LO) and they spied on Communist party members at job sites. These names were handed to the German Nazis and many were arrested, tortured and/or murdered.

6. Anders Fogh Rasmussen is the Venstre party’s prime minister and known for competing with Blair as Bush’s number one international ally. The prime minister’s office is at Christiansborg castle, alongside the parliament.