Spanish Civil War

* Dedication of the nation’s first monument to the 1,500 Americans who died in the Spanish Civil War (Oct. 16) is welcome if belated acknowledgment, 60 years later, of the heroic role these volunteers played in fighting to defend the democratically elected government of the Spanish Republic.

They were not so praised at the time, but were vilified as a bunch of deluded fanatics and Commies, leading President Reagan to say in 1984 that most Americans believed that the civil war volunteers were “fighting on the wrong side.” The mainstream U.S. news media believed that the Lincoln Brigade volunteers were “fighting on the wrong side.” Their anti-Red reporting of the war in the ‘30s led the public to think so, too.

So while the governments of the Western democracies turned their backs on Spain, that fledgling democratic government fell to the German Nazi legions and Mussolini’s fascist armies, whose vast power the volunteers of the U.S. and a dozen other countries were unable to overcome.

SAUL HALPERT

Sherman Oaks