The Lincoln Brigade/Battalion were not dupes. They were the only Americans who actually volunteered to fight fascism, while large numbers of their countrymen and corporations actively collaborated with it.
They were exploited and betrayed, but the same could be said for the majority that stayed home and later were sent off to be slaughtered by the power that the USA worked with "against communism". And at the least the CPUSA volunteers had some agency.
I actually think one is not very wise to go and fight fascists when it is quite obvious that if you contribute to a win, the harvest will be collected by stalinists.
Of course we could say that at the time it was too hard to see, but Purges had already been going on for long, with millions dead in murders and famines, and people knew. Many just chose not to believe.
>Of course we could say that at the time it was too hard to see, but Purges had already been going on for long, with millions dead in murders and famines, and people knew. Many just chose not to believe.
There was also the fact that they didn't had many legs to stand on.
What Stalin did to its own people, the western powers did the same and worse in their colonial territories. Mass executions, dictatorships, torture, forced labour, police brutality, concentration camps, state-caused famines, and the like.
Just one example: "On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algeria in 1830. Directed by Marshall Bugeaud, who became the first Governor-General of Algeria, the conquest was violent, marked by a "scorched earth" policy designed to reduce the power of the native rulers Dey; this included massacres, mass rapes, and other atrocities. Between 500,000 and 1,000,000, from approximately 3 million Algerians, were killed within the first three decades of the conquest."
It didn't continue any better than that. In fact, until the very 60s, decades after WWII ended, the police beat to death 100 demonstrators, not in some remote backwater, but in Paris itself:
And that's just one example from France. There are many other examples from France, Britain, Belgium, and so on.
Besides, they could not care less for the Jews. What they wanted, and fought Germany for, was not to let it rule the world (trade lines, developing nations, crucial territories and so on) -- the same thing WWI, WWII, and the Cold War happened for.
"If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the house of commons."
Hitler was as involved in the Spanish civil war as Stalin. During the following great war, the allies decided that Stalin was the lessor of the two evils, and I think that history has largely judged that to not have been the wrong decision.
Good thing that they were betrayed and a very good thing would have been all of them being killed in the war. He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
Those guys that wanted revolution should have started it in their own house first.
They were exploited and betrayed, but the same could be said for the majority that stayed home and later were sent off to be slaughtered by the power that the USA worked with "against communism". And at the least the CPUSA volunteers had some agency.
Eby's book is good though.