Milton Wolff#World War II

{{Infobox military person

|name = Milton Wolff

|image = Milton Wolff (2007).jpg

|caption =

|birth_date = {{birth date|1915|10|7}}

|birth_place = Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.

|death_date = {{death date and age|2008|1|14|1915|10|7}}

|death_place = Berkeley, California, U.S.

|allegiance = {{Flag|Spanish Republic}}
{{Flag|United Kingdom}}
{{Flag|United States}}

|branch = 25px International Brigades
Special Operations Executive
25px Office of Strategic Services

|unit = The "Abraham Lincoln" XV International Brigade

|commands = Abraham Lincoln Battalion

|battles = Spanish Civil War
World War II

}}Milton Wolff (October 7, 1915 – January 14, 2008) was an American writer and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, the last commander of the Lincoln Battalion of XV International Brigade, and a prominent communist.{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/obituaries/17wolff.html |accessdate=2022-12-14 |work=New York Times |date=January 17, 2008 |title=Milton Wolff, 92, Dies; Anti-Franco Leader |first=Douglas |last=Martin |authorlink=}}Douglas, 2008.

Early life

He was born into a working class Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, New York City. His parents originally came from Lithuania and Hungary. He was also a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. He became active in the Young Communist League on returning to Brooklyn after the CCC. It was there that he volunteered to go to Spain to fight fascism.

Spanish Civil War

In early 1937, Wolff set off to join the International Brigades in Spain, reaching Albacete by March. As a pacifist, a belief common in the 1930s, he originally wished to be a medic. However, after the International Brigades' heavy losses at the Battle of Jarama, he became a soldier instead, joining a machine gun company. "Largely self-educated, ... [he] was an intellectual".Eby, p. 319 He "detested elegant uniforms", customarily wearing "baggy trousers, a stained leather jacket" and, in wet weather, a "woolly poncho".

After a year's fighting in Brunete, Belchite and Teruel, the Brigade lost two senior officers, David Doran and Robert Hale Merriman at the Gandesa battle on the Aragon front. After which, in March 1938, Wolff became the battalion commander. He led the now Lincoln-Washington Battalion during the Battle of the Ebro and left Spain in November 1938 when the International Brigades were demobilized. Ernest Hemingway described him during this period: [he was] "...23 years old, tall as Lincoln, gaunt as Lincoln, and as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg. He is alive and unhit by the same hazard that leaves one tall palm tree standing where a hurricane has passed."Notes by Hemingway on "Major Milton Wolff", in Davidson (1939).

World War II

In 1940, Wolff volunteered for the British Special Operations Executive, and arranged arms for the European resistance organizations. After the United States' entry into World War II, Wolff volunteered for the infantry in June 1942.{{cite book |last1=Carroll |first1=Peter |title=The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade |date=1994 |publisher=Stanford University Press |location=Stanford, CA |isbn=0-8047-2277-3 |page=259}}

He saw action at the end of 1943 in Burma. There, General "Wild Bill" Donovan met him and assigned him to the O.S.S. to work with anti-fascist partisans in occupied Italy.{{cite book |last1=Carroll |first1=Peter |title=The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War |date=1994 |publisher=Stanford University Press |location=Stanford, CA |isbn=0-8047-2277-3 |page=260}}

Later life

Wolff appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to defend VALB (Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade) from being banned as a Communist front organization. His explanation for his actions owed to his ancestry: "I am Jewish, and knowing that as a Jew we are the first to suffer when fascism does come, I went to Spain to fight against it."Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (2008)

According to historian Peter Carroll:

When Congress passed the McCarran Act in 1950, obliging all designated subversive organizations to register with the federal government and creating heavy penalties for leaders who refused to cooperate, the entire executive committee of the VALB resigned in 1950. In its place, two Lincoln veterans stepped forward: Wolff became the National Commander; Moe Fishman became the Executive Secretary/Treasurer and served the organization in an executive capacity for the rest of his life.{{cite news|title=Mosess "Moe" Fishman (1915-2007)|url=http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/document-library/moe-fishman-bio/moe-fishman-bio/at_download/albita_file|publisher=Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade|accessdate=2010-03-13}}

Wolff also battled fiercely for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. He even offered the services of the aging veterans of the Lincoln Brigade to the North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, who declined them. Later, Wolff campaigned against apartheid in South Africa, and raised money for ambulances in Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s, personally delivering twenty of them. Wolff completed two autobiographical novels, A Member Of The Working Class (published 2005) about his early life in New York, and Another Hill (published 1994) about his communist and Spanish experiences; he began a third book, The Premature Anti-Fascist, describing his experiences after leaving Spain and during World War II, but did not finish it before his death.

{{quote|This extraordinary novel centers on one battalion, the Americans, known as the Lincolns, barely trained men who went into battle armed with 1903 Remington rifles. I have never read more intimate, convincing, and devastating accounts of combat.|Martha Gellhorn on Another Hill}}

Personal life

Wolff married and had two children. His family resided primarily in Stony Creek, Connecticut.{{cite book |last1=Nelson |first1=Cary |title=Remembering Spain: Hemingway's Civil War Eulogy and the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade |date=1994 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Urbana |isbn=0-252-02124-X |page=16}} His first marriage ended in divorce. Wolff and his second wife are both buried at the Sunset View Cemetery in El Cerrito.[http://bayareapunk.com/blog/el-cerrito-left.html Leftists Who Called El Cerrito Home]. bayareapunk.com. Retrieved January 14, 2019

Works and features

Wolff was featured in the film documentary The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (1984).
Another Hill: An Autobiographical Novel (1994; University of Illinois Press, 2001). {{ISBN|978-0-252-06983-3}}
A Member of the Working Class (iUniverse, 2005). {{ISBN|978-0-595-37267-6}}

References

Sources

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (2008). [http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/lessons/jewish-volunteers-in-the-spanish-civil-war/jewish-volunteers-in-the-spanish-civil-war Jewish Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War] Accessed: March 11, 2010.
Davidson, Jo (1939). Spanish Portraits. Georgian Press.
Eby, Cecil (2007). Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War. Pennsylvania State University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-271-02910-8}}
Martin, Douglas (2008). [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/obituaries/17wolff.html "Milton Wolff, 92, Dies; Anti-Franco Leader"], New York Times, January 17, 2008 (accessed: March 11, 2010)
Merriman, Marion; Lerude, Warren (1986). American Commander in Spain. Reno: University of Nevada Press. {{ISBN|0-87417-106-7}}

External links

[http://www.alba-valb.org/ Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives/Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/obituaries/17wolff.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin/ New York Times Obituary]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20051105010225/https://www.salon.com/books/feature/1999/07/14/papa/ "He Remembers Papa"]
[http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/alba_170/ Milton Wolff Papers] at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

Category:1915 births

Category:2008 deaths

Category:20th-century American Jews

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:21st-century American Jews

Category:21st-century American male writers

Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:Abraham Lincoln Brigade members

Category:American male non-fiction writers