Theadora Williams
HONS 2011J
Final Essay
Professor Hernández-Ojeda
The Spanish Civil War: The Popular Front, The Commissars, and George Watt
Even in hindsight, the policy of the COMINTERN under Stalin during the Spanish Civil War is contentious, to say the least. Some attribute the downfall of the Republic to their interference, others praise them for the support they lent it. What might have won the war is easy to speculate about in retrospect, but was a much more pressing and difficult issue during its actual course. The policy of the COMINTERN was admittedly at times misguided, as was often the case, but nothing exists in isolation. Their policies were applications of previous lessons to current problems, and should be understood in that light.
To understand the policy of Popular Frontism, we must look at the past experiences of the Communists with fighting fascism, as an overreaction to a disastrous failure. Nazi Germany stood as a towering monument to the fascist victory against the Communists in Germany, where a united right had triumphed against a divided left. The German Communists, Social Democrats, and other branches of the German left had failed to work together to fight the immediate threat, choosing instead to squabble amongst themselves, but they fell together. The popular front policy adopted in Spain was a direct result of the Comintern realization of Lincoln’s statement, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” based on its own huge mistake in assessing the Social Democrats as a threat equal to the Nazis.
However, it has to be admitted that the COMINTERN’s policy was on a spectrum from manipulative to coercive. While they nominally worked with the other parties, they preferred to control them. The parties that wouldn’t submit to this were ostracized and viciously slandered, labelled Trotskyists for deviating from the COMINTERN. The POUM, a member of the Second international along with the ILP, bore the brunt of these attacks. However, the CP took more of a liking towards the anarchists, working with them initially and believing them in the right spirit if in need of proper political education. Some stereotypes concerning the anarchists were true, their lack of organization meant they posed less of a political threat.
However, tensions did simmer within as the policy of Popular Frontism had one aspect even its supporters point to as a flaw. The Popular Front, as organized by the COMINTERN, fought for a bourgeois liberal-democratic revolution. Partly an attempt to garner a large support against the fascists within Spain, the liberal aspect also had another role, namely, an attempt by Stalin to win the Western democracies to assist the antifascist struggle.
This attempt is often overlooked when people raise the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Before its signing, the COMINTERN had actively fought fascism while the Western bourgeois democracies had willingly left Spain to die. When Stalin realized the fascist advance couldn’t be avoided in Spain, the Soviets argued that they made a strategic retreat and bought time by temporarily allying with the enemy, a policy many of the Western countries also employed although few went so wholeheartedly into it, as the Poles discovered to their cost.
The other policy employed by the COMINTERN, their signature one some might say, was the military and political Commissariat. The commissars were first found in the Red Army, their duty primarily to keep an eye on the military officers inherited from the Tsarist army. Their role was turning a state army into a political army, educating the soldiers on what it was they were fighting for and why.
The Spanish Civil War started as a military coup, but a large segment of the armed forces stayed loyal to the Spanish Republic. However, Santiago Casares Quiroga, the prime minister at the time, disbanded army units that had rebelled and inadvertently also some that hadn’t. Instead of rejoining, many soldiers joined volunteer militias, so, although the Republic had the men it lacked the structure of an army.
The militia units began to informally elect political delegates, whose job it was to interface with the Republic on their behalf. Additionally, a page was taken from the Red Army’s handbook and people were tasked with supervising the Republic’s professional officers. Soon, those militia units were converted into a regular army, and the post of Political commissar was not only retained but formalized. Though the war was eventually lost, it could be argued that the discipline of the commissariat allowed the Republic to beat back at the combined forces of the world’s fascist states for three long years.
Of course, not all commissars were saints. Some were found wanting in their duties, others were found to be too eager to push the Communist ideology. However, many commissars were Stakhanovites in the truest sense, bringing all their desire for a better world into their work and excelling for their comrades. One such person was George Watt.
George Watt was born Israel Kwatt, a year before the Great War, on November 5, 1913. Living in East Harlem in his youth, he came from a firmly leftist upbringing. His parents were both proud working-class socialists. His father was a silversmith, jeweler, and general metalworker. Though of Jewish origins, his mother and father were atheists, despite the religious orthodoxy of his grandparents. His paternal grandfather had been a proud socialist as well, one of the leaders of the first textile strike in their Polish hometown of Lotz. Strikes were illegal under the Czar, so he was arrested, put in chains, and ordered to march back to his village as an example to the others. However, that desire to fight for a better world was passed on down the generations.
Watt had joined the Young Communist League in high school, successfully protesting the school’s attempt to raise meal costs. He attended Brooklyn College in 1931, before transferring to Cooper Union to study engineering between 1933-1935. He dropped out to become a full time student organizer for the Communist National Student League. He was also charged with disorderly conduct for “picketing” around this time with James Wechsler and Robert Bloom. It was at that point he changed his name to obscure his Jewish roots, though later in life he said he regretted that. It’s worth pointing out here that though many of the commissars were pulled from the ranks of the Communist Party, usually due to their dedication to the cause and Watt being no exception, some anarchists, socialists, and liberal Republican also held the position.
He recruited others for the war before joining himself. He fought for most of the duration and suffered several, luckily non-fatal, injuries. All the while, he continued to write to his wife and many of those letters are preserved in the Tamiment archives.
Almost fresh off the boat in Spain, Watt saw combat in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion as a rifleman. Fuentes De Ebro was a turning point in his career. The Republican army had launched an offensive across the Ebro, crossing it on pontoons made of boats chained together, before they were repelled. Watt and others found a small house near the town of Mora del Ebro to rest the night. One of his comrades, John Gates, was in a similar situation with two others and found the house. Startled, both parties almost opened fire on the other. They decided to attempt to swim across at dawn, naked except for their hats holding their ID cards , Gates, Watt, and Joseph Hecht made it across, though two of their comrades weren’t so lucky. While walking down the road, they met Herbert Matthews and Ernest Hemingway, who told them most of the Loyalists had managed to retreat and were regrouping. They marched on to join them.
Watt had been “wounded in attack giving aid to wounded comrade”: a bullet went clean through his arm and grazed his chest, leaving a lasting scar he would go on to proudly show his children. He was transferred to Benicassim to receive treatment, where he stayed for approximately a month before being transferred to the Officer Training school for his valor and doubtless also for his CP affiliation. He was said to “have played a big part in the life of the school politically”, and graduated 8th in his class. While recovering, he gave a flag bearing the words “American Students Union” to the Federal Union of Spanish Students in a gesture of international solidarity. In general, he was described as “ever youthful” and would fight while wounded instead of recuperating, his dedication to his duty overriding his sense of wellbeing.
It’s worth it to briefly contrast John Gates and Watt here. During the war, they both served as political commissars but their styles varied wildly. Though Watt was described as “dearly loved” by his charges and chided by his superiors for being too soft on them, Gates was reprimanded for the opposite problem. Gates had a reputation for strictness, and he made the decision to execute a deserter named Paul White, even though he had voluntarily returned. The decision caused unrest among the troops, to the extent that a halt was called on all further executions. The system of the commissariat, was not necessarily the top down absolute approach most people ascribe to it, and was responsive to the concerns of the troops and existed primarily to serve them.
Despite being called too soft by his superior officers, they all complimented him on his politics and grasp of theory. He studied the works of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin and was an expert when it came to applying the dialectic. Complementing his grasp of theory, he subscribed to the papers such as the “Daily Worker” and “Frente Rojo.” He also had a firm understanding of the party line on Popular Frontism. While many complimented the 13 points of the Spanish Republic, he displayed the nuanced understanding of it characteristic to the Communist party. Most importantly, he identified it as a solution against fascism, not a solution in general. As he said in his analysis when prompted by the CP of Spain, “only through the policy of the people’s front can all the people be used to isolate fascism from the great mass of middle and working classes.” In his words, the 13 points were “excellent. They form the basis for uniting all the people of Spain – regardless of whether they are in Republican territory or Fascist territory – around a common program.” He also supported the People’s Front Policy of “preventing the fascists from winning support of the middle classes”. Once again we see the intent of the Popular Front program was defeating Fascism at all costs, even at the cost of inhibiting revolution to do so.
When asked for his opinion on the People’s Front Policy in Spain” he responded “It’s correctness is proved by the heroic and successful resistance put up by the people of Spain. It has pursued a committed policy of carrying out the people’s front programs. In times of crisis [it] has maintained a strong policy – not yielding or compromising.” However, he was no idealogue, when asked what he saw in the policy he cited their aims of social reforms, higher standard of living, and agricultural reforms. In the tradition of the American CP, he also cited the “possibility of peaceful transition into higher type of society in Spain.” It’s quite interesting to note that throughout his life, he would maintain that the American path to socialism was peaceful, though later in life, with the dissolution of the CP, he would be more cynical about any path to socialism in America.
While his day to day life as a commissar isn’t recorded, the duties of the commissars were relatively standard. Occasionally defectors were shot. Political speeches were given often, occasionally to the point of infuriating their charges. On that note, high quality publications were created and distributed free of charge to the soldiers, incorporating news from the front as well as the art and writing of the troops. However, the key duty of the commissar was to fill in the gaps, to perform the odds and ends that the proper military channels didn’t exist for. Whether this was making sure the troops had clothing, rest, entertainment, food, or cigarettes, it was the commissar’s duty to provide for them.
Upon returning, he and his wife Ruth had a son, Daniel Watt. Sadly, Ruth died unexpectedly soon after he was born. George remarried, this time to Margaret, a very close friend of the couple (all three were involved in leftist organizing together). When Daniel was barely two years old, George went on to become a sergeant in the US Air Force during WWII. It was initially very difficult because the U.S government was at first unwilling to allow Spanish Civil War veterans to join, for being “prematurely anti-fascist”, then unwilling to send them into action. They later changed this policy as they needed more men. Decades later, he wrote a memoir about his experience being shot down in Belgium on his 30th birthday, parachuting out of the plane before making his way back home by traveling through Franco’s Spain, called “The Comet Connection: Escape from Hitler’s Europe” in 1990. Far from being the only brigadier to join the ranks of the Allied powers during WWII, he was emblematic of a larger desire among the volunteers to fight for a better world when the need arose.
His whole family, partially representing the Communist Party in alliance with the NAACP, the Labor Party, and the local unions, was involved in protesting the lynching of Charles, Alphonzo, Richard, and Joseph Ferguson, unarmed Black WWII veterans in full uniform, who were shot by a white police officer for attempting to order coffee in a whites only establishment. Sadly, despite all they did, those pigs responsible were never held accountable. This was the psyche that embodied his family, he never stopped instilling his revolutionary spirit in his children, always encouraging them to fight injustice whenever and wherever they could. The Watt family often sang leftist songs together and his son Dan went on to become a Civil Rights activist in his own right.
The flexibility of the Commissariat system left an impression on Watt, and he was able to successfully utilize many of the lessons he’d learned in Spain as a Commissar. Militarily, he “learned tactics of modern warfare – use of arms and automatic weapons – military organization.” He also learned the “politics of people’s front and united front.”
Following the wars, he would covertly disappear for weeks to months at a time, carrying out the orders of the communist party. Throughout the Cold War, the FBI wiretapped him. While they never got any conclusive evidence, he later recounted how he helped the party set up underground systems for when the US government would inevitably crack down on them. Gene Dennis, the executive secretary of the Communist party, tasked him with finding places the leadership could hide in Mexico should the time come. Under the pretense of a family vacation, Watt got in contact with a comrade who had been living there preparing for this very eventuality and built a secret network of operatives. The plan was that when the leaders were arrested, some chosen reserve leaders would flee and run the party from underground.
In 1951 in “Dennis vs. United States”, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals of the Communists convicted in the Smith Act trials. George, along with many who were close to him, including Gil Green, Gus Hall, and Gene Dennis, jumped bail and escaped. George, having fought behind enemy lines in two wars, helped sneak them away into Mexico, then hid there for months. When trying to escort his charges to the safety of the Soviet Union, they were captured in a motel close to Mexico City by the Mexican secret police. Gus was extradited to the US, but George remained in hiding in Mexico City, unsure of who the leak was. He was convinced it was a mole deep within the party leadership, which would explain why nobody was willing to blow their cover testifying against him.
Margaret went to a safe contact and got in touch, and within three months the Communist Party had arranged his safe return to the US. When he finally got back, his son Daniel was already a teenager attending the Bronx High School of Science. However, the reunion was short lived. George then became an underground organizer in western Pennsylvania, specifically near Pittsburgh, where the bosses were particularly brutal in suppressing working-class organizing. His placement there was partially a punishment for failing to get Gus Hall to safety. During this time he worked with numerous unions and covert Communists, often sending messages in code to help the labor movement. Doubtlessly, his training from the war proved handy here.
In this atmosphere he grew suspicious of redecorating going on in the apartment next door, but by then it was too late. The FBI came in, guns drawn, and arrested him November 4, 1953, just one day before his 40th birthday. His bail was set at $25,000. His lawyers argued it should be released due to his heroism escaping from behind Nazi lines. The prosecution riposted that because he was so good at escaping, the bail should in fact be doubled. Eventually, the bail was reduced to $10,000, which his family financed with a second mortgage.
When the trial came after two years of waiting, the prosecution sought to prove that being a Communist was inherently violent, citing the Communist Manifesto as well as the writings of Lenin and Stalin, all without context. The defense countered with the revisionist party line that the path to socialism in advanced capitalist states was peaceful, as opposed to the violence necessary to overthrow the feudal system in Russia. Eventually, he was convicted with the testimony of a paid informant (a “stool pigeon”), and supposed longtime family friend, Alexander Wright. George was deeply shaken by this betrayal. This was especially painful considering George served as the party’s “security officer”, identifying FBI agents and informants. Despite this, those on trial continued all the way in general good spirits, with the customary Communist optimism.
In 1958 he split with the party, following his initial disbelief but final acceptance of Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and his revulsion with the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Though the hard-liners had insisted on following Soviet leadership after the revelations, George had initially tried to democratize the party and steer it away from Soviet control. It was around this time the indictment was finally overturned. The attempt to democratize the party is important to remember, especially when contrasted with the caricatures of the commissars as authoritarian Party thugs.
Having spent nearly all his life as a member of the Communist Party, a professional revolutionary, so to speak, he had no employable skills to speak of. At the unconventional age of 46, he became apprenticed as a journeyman printer by his friends in the industry. Soon after, he went back to Brooklyn College, taking night courses to complete the bachelor’s degree he’d abandoned so long ago. He went on to graduate in social work, working as an administrator of the Community Mental Health Center in Brooklyn from 1968-1982. He died of cancer July, 1994 at the age of 80, survived by his sons, Steven and Daniel, his wife, 4 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren.
George Watt was a hero who fought for a better world. The commissariat and the policy of Popular Frontism may have their faults, however, Watt is a shining example of the best the Communist Party could be.
Sources
Watt, George, “The Comet Connection: Escape from Hitler’s Europe” (1990). History in General. 2.
George Watt, “A Young American Decides to Fight Fascism in Spain,” HERB: Resources for Teachers, accessed May 1, 2020, https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1558.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hemingway Reports Spain.” The New Republic, The New Republic, 27 Apr. 1938, newrepublic.com/article/89502/hemingway-spain-spanish-civil-war.
Richardson, R. Dan. Comintern Army: The International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War. The University Press of Kentucky, 2015. Open WorldCat, http://qut.eblib.com.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1915885.
Watt, Daniel. History Lessons: A Memoir of Growing up in an American Communist Family. 2017. Open WorldCat, https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=F1143121-6BCF-4F6C-A07D-ADC1EB417AD6.
No Attributed Author, (1953, November 5) 3 SEIZED AS RED LEADERS. The New York Times, pp. 36.https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/11/05/93407082.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
No Attributed Author, (1994, July 9) George Watt, 80, Hospital Executive, The New York Times, pp. 11.https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/09/obituaries/george-watt-80-hospital-executive.html
“The Commissar and The Good Fight – by Saul Wellman.” The Volunteer, 16 Sept. 2018, albavolunteer.org/2015/12/blast-from-the-past-revisited/.
“Commissars I’ve Known (and Admired) – by Milt Wolff.” The Volunteer, 10 Dec. 2015, [Originally published in The Volunteer, Volume 7, No. 3, November 1985.], https://albavolunteer.org/2015/12/blast-from-the-past-revisited-commissars-i-have-known/
Organizations and institutions (including public ones) / Section 9. INTERBRIGADES OF THE REPUBLICAN ARMY OF SPAIN / Fund 545. Interbrigades of the Republican Army of Spain / Inventory 6. Lists, personal files of soldiers and commanders of international brigades / Case 1009. Personal files of American volunteers (War- Way) Pages 76-1110
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Spartacus Educational, The Spanish Civil War, Ebro
https://spartacus-educational.com/SPebro.htm