Louis Fischer as "Mitchell" in For Whom the Bell Tolls

In Chapter 18 of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan recalls encountering "a certain British economist" during the defense of Madrid in November 1936. Jordan's and Karkov's description of Mitchell read like a portrait of Louis Fischer, the American Moscow-based correspondent who covered the war in Spain primarily for The Nation. This historical note provides the pertinent biographical information in order to establish Fischer as the model for Mitchell such that other readers and scholars can interpret the novel in this new light.