868.00/8–1147
Memorandum by Mr. Robert G. Miner of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs
Subject: The International Brigade
Within the past month U.S. Missions have reported circumstantial evidence indicating that an active campaign to secure volunteers to fight in Greece has been undertaken in central and eastern Europe. In Italy, recruiting is reported to be carried on in Florence, Leghorn, Bologna, Milan and Turin by former officers of the Spanish International Brigade and by prominent Italian Communists such as Velio Spano, former editor of Unita, the Rome Communist newspaper. In addition to Spanish war veterans and local Communist leaders, Soviet Army officers are stated on reliable authority to be engaged in enlisting volunteers for an international brigade in Germany, particularly in the county of Hersfeld in the province of Kurhessen in the British [Page 293] zone. In Rumania plans have been made to use the Association of Spanish Civil War Veterans as a cover for recuiting activities and to draw additional elements for an international brigade from the ranks of two Rumanian army divisions which were trained and indoctrinated in the USSR. A recent report from Poland of unknown reliability contains considerable circumstantial detail regarding an attempt by a Soviet NKVD Colonel to secure volunteers to fight in Greece from among the members of a Communist-front organization in Radom, a town near Warsaw.
Numerous earlier reports received by the Department have furnished indications of preparations for the organization of an international brigade in various parts of Europe, particularly in France, Czechoslovakia, and Italy. According to these reports, which are of varying degrees of reliability, Spanish Communists and other veterans of the Spanish Civil War, German prisoners of war, and members of youth groups were being organized and trained for action in Greece. It has further been reported that large numbers of these elements were transported to Yugoslavia under the guise of repatriation of Yugoslav nationals.
In connection with the more recent as well as the earlier reports of efforts by European Communists to enlist volunteers for armed intervention in Greece, it will be recalled that a leading Greek Communist in a speech delivered to a Communist Congress in Strasbourg, France, on June 27, expressed gratitude for the foreign aid so far furnished Greek insurgents and appealed to world Communism for “definite, tangible, and total assistance”.
There is no definite information that an international brigade is in existence or that international elements have so far participated in the fighting in Greece. There are, however, in Yugoslavia and Albania sizable foreign groups which have received some military training and could readily be used to swell the ranks of an international brigade to fight in Greece. These foreign groups include: (a) more than 25,000 Greek minority elements (Moslems and Slavo-Mace-donians) which fled Greece in 1944 and 1945 claiming persecution by the Greek authorities; (b) the International Youth Brigade which numbers approximately 50,000, including at least 1,300 foreigners, and which has been engaged in reconstruction work on Yugoslav and Albanian roads and railroads; and (c) perhaps an additional group of from 1,000 to 6,000 of various nationalities, including Spanish Communists, reported by a variety of sources to be undergoing military training in Yugoslavia.