Milton Wolff

Milton Wolff
File:Milton Wolff, Adjuntant of Lincoln-Washington Battalion Dec 1937 Crop Edit.png Wolff in 1937
Born	(1915-10-07)October 7, 1915 New York City, U.S.
Died	January 14, 2008(2008-01-14) (aged 92) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Allegiance	Spanish Republic United Kingdom United States
Branch	File:Emblem of the International Brigades.svg International Brigades Special Operations Executive United States Army File:Office of Strategic Services Insignia.svg Office of Strategic Services
Service years	1937–1938 1940–1945
Rank	Battalion Commander Lieutenant
Unit	The "Abraham Lincoln" XV International Brigade
Commands	Lincoln Battalion
Conflicts	Spanish Civil War Battle of Brunete Battle of Belchite Battle of Quinto Battle of Fuentes de Ebro Battle of Teruel Battle of Segura de los Baños Battle of the Ebro World War II Burma campaign Italian campaign
National Commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
In office December 24, 1939 – 1963
Executive Secretary-Treasurer	Gerald Cook Irving Goff (Acting) David McKelvy White Jack P. Bjoze Mosess Fishman
Preceded by	Paul Burns
Succeeded by	Steve Nelson

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.

Early life

Wolff was born on October 7, 1915 into a working class Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, New York. His parents originally came from Lithuania and Hungary. He attended the New York School of Commercial Art before joining 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

File:Mother Greets Returned Vet 1938 Trim Edit.jpg

Wolff is greeted by his mother after returning home from Spain, December 15, 1938

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". 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."

World War II

File:Milton Wolff 1942.jpg

Wolff in his U.S. Army uniform, 1942

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 U.S. Army infantry in June 1942.

He saw action at the end of 1943 in Burma, where he earned a field commission as a lieutenant. There, General "Wild Bill" Donovan met him and assigned him to the OSS to work with anti-fascist partisans in occupied Italy.

In 1945, Wolff was one of 16 Army officers and enlisted men singled out as alleged Communists by the House Committee on Military Affairs. General Donovan came to their defense, citing their loyalty and effectiveness.

Later life

File:Milton Wolff 1940.jpg

Wolff testifies before the Dies Committee, 1940

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."

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...

However, newspaper accounts indicate Wolff was first elected National Commander in 1939. He was succeeded by fellow Lincoln Battalion commander Steve Nelson in 1963.

File:VALB’s COUNSEL HOMER C. CLAY (L) and MILTON WOLFF 1954 Trim.jpg

Wolff (right) with VALB attorney Homer C. Clay c. 1954

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.

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. His first marriage ended in divorce. Wolff and his second wife are both buried at the Sunset View Cemetery in El Cerrito.

Works and features

• Franco Spain: Menace to World Peace (Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 1947).
• Another Hill: An Autobiographical Novel (1994; University of Illinois Press, 2001).
• A Member of the Working Class (iUniverse, 2005).
• Wolff was featured in the film documentary The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (1984).

Further reading

• Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (2008). 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.
• Merriman, Marion; Lerude, Warren (1986). American Commander in Spain. Reno: University of Nevada Press.

External links

• Error creating thumbnail: File missing Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
• Milton Wolff biography at Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
• New York Times Obituary
• "He Remembers Papa"
• Milton Wolff Papers at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
• Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives/Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
• Organizations - Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - Milton Woolf.: undated
• Committee for Free Spain. Portrait of M. Woolf and Jack (possibly Captain Jack White) Taken for the Committee. (Includes photo of film star Gene Kelly).: Sep 1946