# Why did Britain turn away recruits at the start of WW2 if they had fought in the Spanish Civil war.. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 4, 2019, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960 "2019-02-04T19:42:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/21 "2019-02-05T20:28:05Z")
> [@JB99](#): > > Imagine someone went to Syria, joined ISIS, and suddenly wanted to enlist in the British army. Umm… No. Rightly or wrongly, that’s how the British would have looked at someone who fought in Spain. The legal situation has changed though. Recent UK terrorism laws make it more clearly illegal to go and fight for ISIS, and prosecution is quite possible. In the Spanish Civil War to WWII period there was only the Foreign Enlistment Act which was more ambiguous. Nobody in the UK was actually prosecuted under that law as a result of the Spanish Civil War. So ‘Johnny’ was not turned away in a legal process. However the armed forces could make an administrative decision to deal with somebody differently based on their background, so the story is at least plausible. In the US there was no applicable enlistment law, but Spanish Civil War veterans were in cases discriminated for violating travel laws or as security risks. An example was the Republican volunteer fight pilot and claimed ‘ace’ Ajax Baumler. He resigned his commission in the US Army to go to Spain. Later he tried to join another foreign volunteer fighting group, the AVG or Flying Tigers but was denied a passport due to having violated the travel restrictions to Spain. Eventually he ended up once again a US Army officer in China and flew missions attached to the AVG, and was also as a member of the USAAF successor unit, the 23rd Fighter Group. However after WWII he was denied a permanent commission and among the reasons was said to be his association with the Soviets in Spain. He chose to remain in the service as a sergeant. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/22 "2019-02-05T22:00:39Z")
‘premature anti-fascists’, they were called. The CPGB tied itself in ideological knots over the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Some comrades left the Party over it, others faithfully followed the Moscow line that this was an imperialist war and that they should sabotage the war effort, at least ideologically (and occasionally in more concrete form). ---
**Author:** ![race\_to\_the\_bottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c4cdca/32.png) [@race\_to\_the\_bottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/race_to_the_bottom)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/23 "2019-02-06T04:04:16Z")
In the 1980s, I knew veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. This was the American contingent of the International Brigades. They were extraordinary people. They said that they had been accused of being “Prematurely anti-fascist” and were harassed during the anti-communist witch hunts in the post war period. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/24 "2019-02-06T19:49:32Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > Right, that makes sense. What I don’t understand is the sentenceunless you meant they were serving in the Spanish army on British soil. Which seems ridiculous and hence my question. “serving overseas” seems to imply serving in the British Army overseas, or in Spanish brigades in a land other than Spain - I think this is the misinterpretation that the name seems to imply. So the post seems to be to clarify that International Brigade mean a Spanish Brigade serving in Spain made up mainly of non-Spanish, thus “international”. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/25 "2019-02-06T20:20:44Z")
They were “premature anti-Fascists”. [http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/knox.htm](http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/knox.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/26 "2019-02-06T22:04:07Z")
It was a very interesting mix of volunteers. There were soldiers of fortune just seeking glory or money; there were committed anti-fascist soldiers and veterans of WWI, including many Jews who saw the conflict as an opportunity to fight a proxy war against Hitler; and then there were outright Communists who truly bought into Stalinism. There were also numerous characters with checkered pasts who had been involved in some shady shit. [George Nathan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Nathan) who fought heroically in the International Brigade, had earlier participated in the murder of several Irish Republicans including the mayor of Limerick, as a member of a British paramilitary police division. [Bert “Yank” Levy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yank_Levy#World_War_II:_later_years) was an ex-convict who’d served prison time for armed robbery and was later involved in arms trafficking, but also became a valued instructor on guerrilla warfare to the British military. [Frank Glasgow Tinker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Glasgow_Tinker) was an American aviator who was booted out of the Navy for problems with alcohol and “brawls”, but became an ace in the Spanish conflict. It was kind of like the French Foreign Legion and kind of a microcosm of the major world powers at the time who did not have “clean” hands by any means. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/27 "2019-02-06T22:31:07Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > … So the post seems to be to clarify … That’s a very charitable interpretation. ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2019, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/28 "2019-02-07T06:22:00Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Oddly, in the end, altho Franco was certainly no nice guy, having him win was the best thing to happen to Spain. He is vilified today, of course but he: Kept Spain out of WW2, turned the reins of government over in a peaceful and Democratic manner, and kept Spain together as one nation. If the other side had won, Spain would have fractured, and “gone Commie”. It likely would have entered WW2, or have been invaded by Germany. Five decades of being communist would have destroyed the economy. Yes, Franco was a dictator, but all Communist nations then were run by dictators. There was really no chance of the civil war ending in a unified Democratic Spain. ☹ Meh. Nobody ever said there has to be a ‘good guy.’ Many wars in history have been fought by two ‘bad guys,’ in which their villainy is just a matter of degree. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2019, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/29 "2019-02-07T07:22:19Z")
> [@Lamoral](#): > > The Spanish Republican military units had “commissars” whose job it was to politically indoctrinate the soldiers with Communism. The British did not want men from that kind of environment joining their ranks - and presumably since they were battle-tested veterans of a brutal war, they would have been in a position of being looked up to by the newer and more impressionable British soldiers, increasing the chances of the other recruits being influenced by them politically. It was just a very risky move and the British military did not want to take the chance. Bit of a footnote, but there were (probably still are) diehard old-school Conservatives who put a substantial part of the Labour landslide in the 1945 election down to the Army Education Corps lecturers on current affairs (or almost anything other than purely military technicalities), as they assumed they were all or mostly left-wingers of one sort or another, though not necessarily outright CP apparatchiks. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/30 "2019-04-26T13:48:46Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Oddly, in the end, altho Franco was certainly no nice guy, having him win was the best thing to happen to Spain. He… turned the reins of government over in a peaceful and Democratic manner… I thought it was still a one-party Fascist Lite state at the time he died. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/31 "2019-04-26T13:54:23Z")
Yeah, he died thinking he had everything “tied up tight”. Juan Carlos I turned around, made Adolfo Suárez President and told him to get a-cuttin’. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/32 "2019-04-26T15:43:49Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I thought it was still a one-party Fascist Lite state at the time he died. Sure, but the mechanism was there for a full democratic move, and that’s what happened, as per **Nava**. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/33 "2019-04-26T17:03:47Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Yeah, he died thinking he had everything “tied up tight”. Juan Carlos I turned around, made Adolfo Suárez President and told him to get a-cuttin’. After ETA had conveniently projected Franco’s chosen PM and his car over a nearby rooftop, Franco having resisted all calls for legitimising political parties until the end ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/34 "2019-04-26T17:24:15Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I thought it was still a one-party Fascist Lite state at the time he died. IIRC, the doctors tried like hell to keep him alive. They cut one piece after another out of him until the bitter end. There was a cartoon in Punch at the time where an angel is handing St. Peter a package with the caption “It’s Franco’s liver. He’s coming up here one piece at a time.” To steal a joke from the Oscars - “wherever Franco is, I hope he’s looking up at Spain proud of what it’s become…” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/35 "2019-04-26T19:27:38Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > After ETA had conveniently projected Franco’s chosen PM and his car over a nearby rooftop, Franco having resisted all calls for legitimising political parties until the end Not a rooftop, a schoolyard’s wall. Let’s be accurate, in honor of the many people I know (moving to “knew”) who reckoned that the Admiral’s murder fell into “risks of the job” but who would go frothing mad when they remembered the murderers saying that if the Admiral had been to the later Mass and the car had fallen atop a bunch of first graders, it would just have been an extra bonus. The doctors made it so Franco would officially die on November 20th. That was the anniversary of the execution of [José Antonio Primo de Rivera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Antonio_Primo_de_Rivera), founder of Falange. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/36 "2019-04-26T20:42:40Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > IIRC, the doctors tried like hell to keep him alive. They cut one piece after another out of him until the bitter end. There was a cartoon in Punch at the time where an angel is handing St. Peter a package with the caption “It’s Franco’s liver. He’s coming up here one piece at a time.”… Reminds me that, when Randolph Churchill had a tumor removed from his lung and it was found to be nonmalignant, Evelyn Waugh commented, “It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and to remove it.” ---
**Author:** ![Onthefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9de053/32.png) [@Onthefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onthefly)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/37 "2019-04-26T23:50:23Z")
In 1970, when I was applying for a US Navy ROTC scholarship, I had to sign a statement that I had not served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. I was 17, you do the math. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960/38 "2019-04-27T00:31:50Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > But seems a rather extreme, given the shortage of experienced troops (under 40 at least). Consider this. The day after Pearl Harbor my father and his two best friends tried to enlist. His two friends were accepted. My father failed his physical. By September 1942 when he was drafted, he not only made a miraculous recovery, but was so healthy the Army didn’t just assign him to a desk job, they decided he was fit enough for the infantry. In other words, by the book standards get loosened. Quickly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-britain-turn-away-recruits-at-the-start-of-ww2-if-they-had-fought-in-the-spanish-civil-war/828960.md?page=1)