German Veterans of the Spanish Civil War and the Struggle for Recognition in West Germany

Theoretical Context: Recognition vs. Redistribution

• The Paradigm Shift: In the decades following the collapse of state socialism, global sociopolitical projects have shifted from a focus on redistribution (material/economic justice) toward projects of recognition (cultural/identity justice).

• Optimistic Interpretation (Axel Honneth, 2003): Views the shift not as a loss, but as the satisfaction of a more generalized human need for recognition, where redistribution is merely a subcategory of this broader social dynamic.

• Critical Interpretations:

  • Nancy Fraser (2003): Suggests the shift is an outcome of neoliberal hegemony, which can accommodate cultural recognition more easily than material redistribution.

  • Walter Benn Michaels (2007): Argues that recognition projects actually endow the neoliberal order with moral legitimacy, compensating for the abandonment of redistributive justice.

• The Central Inquiry: Stalnaker explores the relationship between recognition and state legitimation. He asks: To what extent is recognition contingent upon a convergence of interests between the state (recognizer) and the claimant (recognized)? Do these dynamics mediate boundaries of inclusion and exclusion?

Collective History: Germans in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

• Catalyst for Conflict: The Second Spanish Republic was the first geopolitical casualty of National Socialism. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy intervened to support the Nationalist rebels, turning an abortive coup into a three-year civil war.

• The Foreign Volunteers: International solidarity led tens of thousands to fight for the Republic, often supported by the Communist International, despite official non-intervention policies from home governments.

The Condor Legion (Fascist Combatants)

• Nature of Deployment: Deployed by the National Socialist regime. Comprised of members of the regular German military.

• Numerical Data: Approximately $19,000$ Germans served in this unit.

• Motivations: Secrecy surrounded the mission; factors included adventure, supplemental income, and a sense that service was involuntary. However, once deployed, the mission was framed ideologically: to defeat "Bolshevism."

• Impact and Losses: Known for the destruction of Guernica (April 26, 1937). They provided vital air support to Francisco Franco. They had a casualty ratio of less than $1\%$ in Spain.

• Post-Spain Fate: Their combat experience was utilized by Nazi Germany in WWII. Only an estimated $1/5$ of the unit's pilots survived WWII.

The Spain-fighters (Antifascist Combatants)

• Terminology: Known as Spanienkampfer.

• Background: Comprised of German socialists, anarchists, and primarily communists who had been persecuted by the Nazis since 1933 (arrests, concentration camps, and exile).

• Numerical Data: Roughly $3,000$ German antifascists fought for the Republic.

• Mortality Rate: Estimated $1/4$ to $1/3$ were killed during the conflict.

• Post-War Plight: Upon the Republic's collapse, many fled to France and were held in internment camps. Hundreds were recaptured by the Gestapo after the fall of France and sent to concentration camps as "Red Spain-fighters."

Memory Politics in the Early West German State (FRG)

• Competing Successor States: Both the GDR (East) and FRG (West) sought international legitimacy after 1949.

• East German Approach: Appropriated the antifascist resistance legacy; Spanienkampfer were celebrated and given high prestige.

• West German Approach: Adopted a posture of repentance/atonement regarding the Nazi past, but focused on victimhood rather than resistance.

• The "Unusable Past": Crimes committed in Spain were not directed at the Franco regime (which the FRG engaged with diplomatically). Consequently, the Spanish past was rarely mentioned in public; instead, its legacy was processed through obscure legal channels regarding veteran claims.

The Evolution of Reparations for Spain-fighters

• Initial Recognition (1947): Early postwar guidelines in the Manual of Reparations (Handbuch der Wiedergutmachung) explicitly identified Spain-fighters in the International Brigades as "Activists against Fascism" and victims of National Socialism.

• The Cold War Shift: As East-West tensions rose, the West German legal bureaucracy was purged of communists.

  • Case Study: Marcel Frenkel: An esteemed Jewish lawyer and editor of the Manual of Reparations who was removed from the bureaucracy. Antisemitic tropes were used to link his Jewish identity with communism.

• Transitional Injustice: The homogenization of personnel led to the reversal of guidelines. By 1949 and 1950, new opinions stated that injuries sustained in Spain were not a consequence of National Socialist persecution measures.

• The Disaggregation of Struggles: West German justice officials claimed that fighting in the Spanish Civil War was a fight for the "existence of the Spanish Republic" and not a struggle against National Socialism as such.

• Legal Inconsistency: The FRG ignored that the Nazi regime had prosecuted these fighters for "preparation for high treason" against Germany. By 1957, legal opinions maintained that participation in Spain was ineligible for reparations.

• The "Communist Clause": The 1953 Federal Supplementary Law (Bundeserganzungsgesetz) made eligibility contingent on non-involvement in communist activity. Anyone deemed an "adherent of a totalitarian system" was denied reparations.

• Surveillance: The Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz continued to surveil Spanienkampfer as potential "Red" subversives, effectively perpetuating Nazi-era exclusion.

The Recognition of the Condor Legion in the FRG

• Perpetrators as Beneficiaries: Veterans of the Condor Legion were guaranteed pensions as civil servants under the 1949 Basic Law. They even received an additional pension benefit specifically for their time in Spain.

• The Claim to Victimhood: Condor Legionnaires who had lived in the Soviet zone (East Germany) applied for asylum in West Germany as political refugees during the 1950s.

• Ideological Processing: Their claims were based on the fear of disclosing their Nazi backgrounds to East German authorities. West German bureaucrats often validated these claims by using Nazi-era language (e.g., saying the Legion was deployed to "overpower Bolshevism").

• Subjective Evaluative Criteria: Even when claims of East German repression were found to be false or unproven, West German officials granted asylum on "grounds of discretion."

  • Note on Intelligence: The CIA-funded "Combat Group against Inhumanity" helped substantiate vague allegations of East German iniquity to assist these applicants.

• The Result: Former agents of the Nazi regime were integrated into West German society as "victims of totalitarianism," while former antifascist resisters were excluded.

Sociology of Knowledge and Legitimation

• Symbolic Universe (Berger and Luckmann, 1967): Theoretical constructions used to legitimate institutional orders and individual biographies. The FRG prioritized the struggle against communism in the present over atonement for the Nazi past to maintain its symbolic universe.

• Totalitarianism as a Conceptual Tool: Used to link the Nazi past with the communist present. It "relativized" fascist crimes by comparing them to communist ones and cast doubt on the concept of "antifascism."

• Nihilation: A negative form of legitimation used to strip the Spanienkampfer of their status as resisters. By labeling them potential perpetrators of "totalitarian crimes" (communism), the state neutralized the moral threat their history posed to the FRG's anti-communist narrative.

• Misrecognition: The recognition conferred (or denied) by the FRG was not based on justice but on its own self-legitimation needs. This resulted in the reproduction of fascist-era political fault lines in the post-fascist era.

Conclusion

• Instrumental Recognition: Both the FRG and the GDR used the history of the Spanish Civil War for self-legitimation. The GDR's recognition of Spain-fighters and the FRG's non-recognition/persecution of them both served the "competitive dual moral economy of Cold War politics."

• The Nature of the Struggle: Recognition struggles are shown to be ideologically embedded. A state's acquiescence to a claim is fundamentally contingent on a convergence of interest between the recognizer and the recognized.