In this Book
- Letters from the Spanish Civil War: A U.S. Volunteer Writes Home
- Book
- 2013
- Published by: The Kent State University Press
Following the 1936 military uprising that was supported by Hitler and Mussolini against Spain’s legally elected Republican government, Geiser decided that more needed to be done than simply delivering speeches and raising money to fight fascism. Joining with over 35,000 volunteers from fifty countries to cross the Pyrenees and help defend the beleaguered and isolated government, Geiser acted on his personal political ideology, which was based on American small-town communal values and internationalist ideals of class-based solidarity.
In Letters from the Spanish Civil War, possibly the largest surviving collection of letters written by a U.S. volunteer during this conflict, Geiser eloquently describes to family and friends the deep personal motivations that led him to risk his life to defend democracy in a faraway country. His detailed descriptions of the daily reality of warfare in one of the first battlefields of World War II sought to inspire those back home to awaken the U.S. public opinion and policy makers to the global threat of Fascist expansionism.
Table of Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Introduction
- pp. 1-14
- Carl Geiser’s Letters
- pp. 15-180
- Postscript
- pp. 181-183
- Suggested Readings
- p. 202
- Back Cover
- p. 218