The newcomers will join the first volunteers. In October 1936, the first of the international brigades was formed:the 11th. It has five battalions of 600 men each, from the centuries. Its first leader is a Frenchman, Captain Jules Dumont.
If they don't look like the popular militias, the international brigades won't quite look like the regular units of other armies either. Career officers are sought after but rare and most leaders are trained in the field. Moreover, each brigade, each battalion, each company even, publishes its newspaper, meets regularly to discuss. Finally, following the example of the Red Army, the commanders are assisted — and supervised — by political commissars.
This double character - political and military - that the 5th Spanish regiment had already adopted implies a double hierarchy. From a military point of view, the international brigades are incorporated into the Spanish Republican Army and depend only on the High Command. Their supreme leader is General José Miaja Menant, one of the few general officers who remained loyal to the Republic. But their political control is ensured by a complex organization, the Albacete base, headed by André Marty, one of the leaders of the French Communist Party and of the Comintern.
In his novel Pour qui sonne the death knell, Ernest Hemingway drew an unflattering portrait of Marty. The reality is more nuanced.
Catalan, originally from Perpignan, Marty, a marine mechanic non-commissioned officer in 1919, was sent to the Black Sea to fight the Bolsheviks and tried to instigate the mutiny of his ship's crew. Tried and thrown in prison, he becomes a hero for the revolutionaries. The man is all one piece:he has the Marxist faith and his morals are austere, but he is tyrannical, subject to unhealthy anger, seeing enemies everywhere except, sometimes, where they really are.
Demanding for himself and for others, he is an excellent organizer.
The task that awaits him in Spain is not easy. It is a question of giving cohesion to an army which is a veritable mosaic of nationalities. Moreover, if most of those who come to enlist in the brigades are militants, idealists, there is no shortage of unusable recruits, or adventurers, or even bad apples.
Au At first, you enter Albacete as if you were entering a mill. One day we see a newcomer taking out of his suitcase a superb uniform of an Albanian colonel:he is neither Albanian nor a col nel:he is a madman.
In Europe, the crisis and unemployment are rife . Edouard Herriot, ma de Lyon, advises the unemployed to go for a short trip to Spain.
There are "soldiers of fortune", those who love war for war's sake, for looting, girls, good pay.
With a iron fist, André Marty restores order. "No women, no adventurers," he said when he arrived. To ward off the mercenaries. decides that the "internationals" will have, whatever their rank, no other salary than that, very meager, of the Spanish 2nd class.
A meticulous file is established on each volunteer.
In this task, Marty is assisted by "Gallo", whose real name is Luigi Longo, today leader of the Italian communist party.
Sometimes it's not not on the order of command but on that of the Albacete base that breaches of discipline will be punished by firing squad.