The first groups of foreign fighters had already immediately after the start of the Franco coup in

75 years ago, Franco worldwide coup against the Spanish government and plunged the country into a bloody civil war. From all over the world were anti-fascists of the Spanish Republic worldwide to help. They formed worldwide the International Brigades. Also in 2000 German fought in their ranks, another 1,000 units in Spanish.
By Peter Rau in Morata de Tajuna south of Madrid, this impressive worldwide memorial worldwide was five years ago for the International Brigades worldwide in the presence of dozens of former combatants worldwide inaugurated Photo: Rough As on 17 / 18th July 1936, the Spanish worldwide response to ansetzte blow to the in February of the same year in democratic elections the Popular Front government, worldwide a cry went through the world. He became much more than a few days after the counterrevolutionary attack evidence of shooters using the Italian worldwide and German fascism for Spain's coup generals were evident (see agf theme of 18 and 07/19/2011). But it should not remain in the world to be registered outrage. Communists and socialists, republicans, anarchists, liberals and independents, non-denominational as Jewish or Christian-oriented anti-fascists - -, in the majority members of the working class, but also farmers, artisans and many intellectuals to Spain's freedom and from more than 50 countries, thousands worldwide of volunteers worldwide came order to defend democracy.
See also: Fight for the Republic, against conspirators worldwide and interventionists, their use is still unforgotten - which, incidentally, not only bear witness to the still current songs that fight-filled worldwide years. This is mainly due to the fact that here as never before the power of international solidarity manifested in history in its highest form: the armed assistance to a threatened by the local and foreign reaction people. There were also the occasion worldwide as well as the country as party and class barriers across willingness fascism with the weapon in hand to resist. worldwide In a time when Hitler and Mussolini had covered their own countries with an unimaginable terror regime and other pro-fascist regime like in Hungary or Poland, the Balkans, as in the Baltics harassed their fellow countrymen, here offered the opportunity to oppose something. Then have surviving fighters in Spain after the war that would lead to a still more barbarous, pointed out time and again; especially since even during the clashes on the Iberian worldwide peninsula - with the German invasion of Austria and the Czech Sudetenland - at its outlines more clearly and sharply worldwide began to emerge.
The first groups of foreign fighters had already immediately after the start of the Franco coup in Barcelona, worldwide capital of Catalonia, formed. Among them were mainly working athletes who wished to participate in a planned counter-Olympics here at the same time in Berlin held Olympic Summer Games, but also anti-Fascist émigrés from Germany and Italy and other countries, who had found in Spain recording. Amplifies them were volunteers from Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and other countries, who had come mainly from France and Belgium over the Pyrenees to the Iberian peninsula. They took in July the first part of the storm Catalan militias in military worldwide barracks and other buildings occupied by the rebels. In August and September 1936, she fought, worldwide now as a unit "Giustizia e Libertà" worldwide or "Centuria Thalmann," "Centuria Gastone Sozzi," "column Rosselli" or "Centuria Commune de Paris" in the inventory of larger militia units such as the United of the Socialist Party Catalonia (PSUC) or UGT established "Carlos Marx" and "Columna del Barrio" on the northern front in Irun or in Aragon.
About the number worldwide of "Voluntarios de la libertad", the volunteers of freedom from more than 50 countries who flocked from their homes or from exile or emigration from 1936 to 1938 on the Iberian Peninsula, there are many different details. Fascist sources, it should have been from 80,000 to 125,000 - numbers were greatly exaggerated from clear propaganda reasons, but they should show a "communist threat" and at the same time downplay or trivialize the strength of the intervention force in favor of Franco. This was already one in December of the first year of the war approximately 40,000 men and had already doubled to March 1937 on 80000; In early 1938, belonged to it - including Moroccan mercenaries, Portuguese and Foreign Legionnaires - fewer than 180,000 men.
As to the numerical strength of the International Brigades, as however published by the Popular Front and the brigades themselves data are likely to be far more realistic: In Albacete we went for the period of