Welcome to Journey Through Time and the second in our six-part series on the Spanish Civil War and the International Brigades.

Last time we told the story of Franco's coup that cut Spain in half in July 1936 and how the democracies, Britain and France,

just stood aside, how they refused to supply arms or support the democratically elected

government of Spain, while Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union turned what we call the Spanish

Civil War into a European proxy war. The Republic held the cities, Franco

controlled the countryside, and critically most of the army. But volunteers started arriving from

across the world, convinced if they could stop fascism in Spain, they could stop it in its tracks.

Yeah, so when we left off last time, the first international volunteers were

crossing into Spain. By late 1936, the Western democracies have officially chosen appeasement,

but their citizens in their thousands, are choosing otherwise. So American volunteers are about

to break U.S. neutrality laws to join a much larger international force that's already forming in Spain.

And in doing so, they'll create the first racially integrated military unit in American history.

Which is just amazing. I had to look that up because the history of segregation and integration

in the American Army is something that I know a lot about. And of course, in the official American

army, it's not Spain. But this is the first American military force made up of Americans that is integrated. And I hadn't clocked that. And it's the subject I thought I knew well. As we'll say, as we tell this story, this is the so-called link, it's known as the Lincoln Brigade, properly called the Lincoln Battalion for the officinados out there. out there, they'll get annoyed if we mix that up, but it's usually referred to as the Lincoln Brigade, properly called the Lincoln Battalion for the aficionados out there. They'll get annoyed if we mix that up, but it's usually referred to as the Lincoln Brigade. And yeah, as we tell that story, there's actually a lot of firsts that are involved with the Lincoln Brigade. It's a really, really fascinating story from American history. And, of course, it converges here with Spanish history.

And as we said, there are other Americans on their way,

Ernest Hemingway, Martha Galhorn,

also the Brits, George Orwell, Kim Filby,

and they're all drawn to this political cauldron in Spain for different reasons.

And these are all people who've come from governments,

from nations whose governments have

decided to not intervene. They are decided as individuals personally that they are going to

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