Over 200 German, Austrian, and Dutch Soldiers Missing from Spanish Civil War Identified by Spain

Researchers from the Spanish government reported on Sunday that they have successfully identified 357 foreign fighters who were reported missing during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a battle that hinted at the imminent World War II.

The identities of 212 combatants hailing from Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands have been confirmed, as mentioned in a governmental statement on Sunday. Among the identified, 102 were German, 70 Austrian, and 40 Dutch. No additional information was provided regarding identified individuals of other nationalities.

The identified fighters were part of the International Brigades, military groups established by the Communist International to oppose General Francisco Franco’s fascist forces. Roughly 40,000 foreign individuals, men and women, volunteered to fight in defense of the democratic Second Spanish Republic and against the burgeoning fascism in Europe during the late 1930s.

The identification results are derived from a year-long study of records stored in documentary archives in both Spain and Russia. Researchers pored over the daily rosters of casualties and missing soldiers, a task made more challenging as the names of rank-and-file soldiers were often omitted.

These lists are stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History in Moscow. Additionally, researchers referred to the main archives on the Spanish Civil War located in Spain.

Through a meticulous cross-referencing of documents, researchers could deduce the probable areas where these soldiers were either severely wounded or killed. This significant finding paves the way towards discovering their remains in mass graves scattered throughout the country.

Alfons Aragoneses, the project head, remarked that this research offers “extremely valuable information that allows us to reach out to the relatives of the missing fighters and potentially intervene in the located mass graves in the future.”

All identified individuals were part of the Thälmann Brigade, a predominantly anti-Nazi German Communist unit. This battalion was operational on the Ebro River front in northeastern Spain from March to September 1938, where the war’s longest and deadliest battle occurred.

The research, sponsored by the Catalan regional government, continues with the intent to enhance the country’s historical memory. The next phase of the project will attempt to identify missing militiamen from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. The final phase would necessitate exhumation of the graves to look for bodies.

Historians believe that nearly 10,000 foreign volunteers perished in combat on Spanish terrain during the war. The exact number of those still unidentified and interred within graves is yet to be determined.

The Spanish Civil War was a proving ground for Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy before World War II. This instigated international outcry in an attempt to preserve the Republic’s democratic government, which eventually fell to Franco in 1939.

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• Spanish Civil War
• International Brigades
• Francisco Franco
• Historical Memory in Spain
• Thälmann Brigade