Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War The Distant Sound of Battle Gilbert H. Muller Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War Gilbert H. Muller Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War The Distant Sound of Battle Gilbert H. Muller City University of New York New York, NY, USA ISBN 978-3-030-28123-6 ISBN 978-3-030-28124-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28124-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Cover credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Sadie Rain and Vivian Dalia With Love PREFACE The Spanish Civil War was, as Hugh Thomas observes, “a most pas- sionate war,” and no American writer was more devoted to the demo- cratically elected Second Republic than Ernest Hemingway.1 This book offers a fresh account of Hemingway’s adventures in Spain during the Civil War, stressing his embrace of radical political action and discourse in defense of the Republic against the forces of Fascism. Virtually all of Hemingway’s writing and political activities during the period deal with this polarized moment in Spain’s history. In the end, his immer- sive journey into the turbulent world of the Spanish Civil War enabled him to compose For Whom the Bell Tolls, a landmark in American political fction. Hemingway was a unique witness to cataclysmic events and a writer unusually adept at capturing in fction and other modes of literary expression the complexities of world history. During the 1930s, he was never apolitical as some critics and biographers contend; in fact, he was a deep reader of history and an astute observer of the political scene who marched to his own drummer. An anarchist or libertarian by tem- perament and a supreme artist by inclination, Hemingway had coherent views on national and world events, and during the Spanish Civil War experimented with diverse forms of political discourse to render his understanding of the confict. (He even conquered stage fright to speak in behalf of the Spanish Republic.) Suspicious of the New Deal’s attempt to transform Key West into a tourist attraction and the Roosevelt admin- istration’s tepid response to the devastating Labor Day hurricane of vii viii PREFACE 1935, he railed against bureaucrats in “Who Murdered the Vets?” which appeared in the radical magazine New Masses. Viewing the global scene in articles for Esquire and Ken, new magazines that he was instrumental in promoting, he predicted that a new war in Europe was unavoidable. Throughout the decade, Hemingway was preoccupied with develop- ments in Spain, the one nation that he loved more than any other except for his own. Hemingway realized that totalitarian nations were using Spain as a laboratory for the mechanized horrors and mass killing that anticipated another world war. Paul Preston, whose monumental scholarship about the Spanish Civil War informs this book, observes: “The scale of terror and repression… which had been easily won by the rebels made it clear that their objective was not simply to take over the state but to exter- minate an entire liberal and reforming culture.”2 Hemingway operated from a similar perspective. He covered the causa as a reporter on four occasions, recording his understanding of the confict in dozens of dis- patches for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Additionally, he wrote numerous articles for Esquire and Ken magazines; a three-act drama and a documentary screenplay; and fve semi-autobiographical stories, all rooted in his intimate experience of the Civil War. And in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish tragedy, he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls—a work as relevant today as it was in 1940 and hailed by both Barack Obama and John McCain as their favorite novel. Hemingway was a magnetic presence among the journalists, writers, fghters, and political operatives who focked to Spain during the Civil War. He enjoyed unrivaled access to offcials and combatants alike, among them key fgures in the International Brigades including vol- unteers in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. With him throughout the confict were Martha Gellhorn, an accomplished writer, activist, and journalist who would become his third wife; and Herbert Matthews, a correspondent for The New York Times. Their infuence on Hemingway is a main feature in the book. Hemingway’s passionate commitment to the Spanish Republic illu- minates all aspects of this study. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he returned to professional journalism for the frst time since he had fled articles for the Toronto Star on the postwar situation in Europe. He used his new assignment in order to promote the cause of the Spanish Republic. His activities and writing during this period, culminating with PREFACE ix For Whom the Bell Tolls, should be considered as a body of political pro- duction unmatched by any other American or European writer of the era. As such, this book asks readers to consider Hemingway’s writing during the period framed by the Spanish Civil War as a coherent polit- ical project. In this context, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which Hemingway conceived as a contemporary counterpart to War and Peace, should be viewed as a transnational novel with historical and political implica- tions. Hemingway advanced the global debate over the relevance of the Spanish Civil War for global democracy. His work during this period encapsulates an era. Ernest Hemingway was at his best as a person and an artist during a time that for him was a personal crusade to save the Spanish Republic. In the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, he harnessed personal experience, a supple critical intelligence, and creative talents to write For Whom the Bell Tolls, creating a love story for a popular audience while at the same time dramatizing through the trope of war all the complex interactions among competing cultural, historical, and ideological forces that defned the confict. Hemingway’s love of Spain, relentless efforts to support the Republican cause, and warnings about the gathering forces of totalitarianism reveal an engaged, visionary artist who anticipated the world to come. New York, USA Gilbert H. Muller NOTES 1. Thomas, 616. 2. Preston, The Spanish Civil War, 109. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Megan Laddusaw, the history editor at Palgrave Macmillan, for her enthusiastic support of this study from the outset. Megan’s assistant editor, Christine Pardue, has been equally excited about the book and most helpful in moving the project forward. I’m obliged as well to Palgrave’s production staff and to Lisa Rivero for her preparation of the index. To the anonymous reviewers, I am grateful for their helpful assessment of the preliminary proposal and manuscript. The study itself builds on foundational biographies and critical texts by numerous Hemingway scholars, among them Carlos Baker, Jeffrey Meyers, Michael Reynolds, Scott Donaldson, Matthew J. Bruccoli, Bernice Kert, Gail D. Sinclair, Kirk Curnutt, Linda Martin-Wagner, Sandra Spanier, and Robert W. Trogdon. Two recent biographies by Mary Dearborn and James M. Hutchisson offer fresh critical insights infuencing my approach to Hemingway’s involvement in historical and political events. Among the specialized treatments of Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War, I have found studies by Allen Josephs, Peter Wyden, Edward F. Stanton, Amanda Vail, Alex Vernon, Adam Hochschild, and William Braasch Watson to be especially helpful. My focus on Hemingway’s relationship with Martha Gellhorn would not have been possible without Caroline Moorehead’s biography and her edition of Gellhorn’s selected letters. Among the numerous historians on the Spanish Civil War, I am indebted to the work of Paul Preston and Helen Graham who, I suggest, get the confict right. xi xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Finally, I wish to thank the staff of the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library (notably Maryrose Grossman) as well as archi- vists in the rare books and manuscript collections at the New York Public Library, New York University, and Stanford University who pointed me to primary sources and illustrations. With much gratitude, I salute the Hemingway Society for its ongoing efforts to keep the iceberg afoat. CONTENTS 1 The Distant Sound of Battle, December 1936 1 2 Conspirators, January–February 1937 29 3 Madrid, March–May 1937 51 4 The Spanish Earth, June–August 1937 89 5 The Fifth Column, August–December 1937 131 6 The Time Now, the Place Spain, January–May 1938 155 7 The Carnival of Treachery, June–November 1938 183 8 No Man Is an Island, December 1938–December 1940 209 Selected Bibliography 239 Index 247 xiii ABBREVIATIONS DIA Death in the Afternoon EH Ernest Hemingway FSF F.