Molotov

Commune of France

Delegates of the United Nations,

“If you tolerate this, your children will be next.”

That sentence may be the most prophetic of the many dire warnings about the threat of Fascism. It was known across the globe, originating in Spain, alongside Ethiopia the first of many nations abandoned by bourgeois states during the rise to power of Hitler. France does not absolve herself of guilt in this matter; Boulangist infiltrators and wreckers sabotaged the Popular Front under Comrade Léon Blum time and again, until the government itself fell to the appeasers than opened the door for the vile Vichyists. The difference between France and the rest of the governments of the world, exempting of course the Soviet Union and Mexico, who stood proudly by the Spanish Republic up to the bitter end, is simple.

We seek to atone. Others, to conquer.

While free people across the globe gave their lives for a future free of war, hatred, and imperial ambition, la Represión franquista continued unabated. Rule of law in Spain became rule of torture, as proven by the thousands who fled the regime in its inception and found a cold welcome abroad. The rights of women were disregarded in such an undignified, horrific way that I dare not put the perversity of the matter in print, only remind this body of another phrase: your children will give birth to fascists. Anti-Semitism, concentration camps, and assassination were and are the order of the day.

This is not a lecture given by a Communist, although I am as proud of that label as I am my service in defense of the true Spanish government and my work alongside General de Gaulle in freeing our nation from the Marshal of Death and his puppetmasters in Berlin. This is a case of law and justice, of crimes against humanity that are blatantly ignored while others are rightfully prosecuted. Iberia cries out under the yoke of fascism, but the “Allies” who so valiantly gave their lives in a futile attempt to land on our shores befriend one such state and ignore the other. Treaties about harnessing the power of the Atom have proven more important than harnessing the power of Man to seek their fundamental rights, and the suppression of such power -which exists in blatant violations of the statutes of the International Court of Justice as well as human dignity as a whole- is nowhere more evident than it is in Spain.

But the war itself is still barely over, at least against the states themselves that prosecuted such a grotesque endeavor. It is understandable, albeit barely, that the world made no move against Franco when Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo still reigned supreme over much of the globe, and the strategic value of Spanish “neutrality” -as if one can remain truly neutral when the cause of all of humanity is at stake!- was important to the war effort. This we say despite the deportations of Republicans to Vichy, despite the role of the División Azul in conscripting Spanish citizens to fight against the Soviet Union as volunteers, despite a fundamental abhorrence of everything Fascist governance stands for. This understanding is not absolution, however: criminality is criminality is criminality, and the moral imperative of the international community remains action, further action, and yet more action.

France, on behalf of the Spanish Republican government-in-exile in Paris, hereby calls upon the International Court of Justice to bring a case against the pretender Spanish State, calling upon the leadership of the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, General Mohammed ben Mizzian, and the Apostolic Nuncio to Spain to address violations of the Geneva Convention during the Spanish Civil War. While we cannot as yet take our rightful seat in the United Nations until General de Gaulle returns to service in the reformed military of France, the Red Army of Workers and People of France, we ourselves cannot remain quiet anymore, and implore our fellows in the war against fascism, particularly but by no means exclusively the thusfar-silent parties of the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the military “government” based in the Commune-Department of Marseilles, to echo our calls for justice for Spain. If not these nations, working alongside the enlightened peoples of Europe libérée, then who? For I remind the international community:

If you tolerate this, your children will be next.

Vive la Commune, por vuestra libertad y la nuestra.


-André Marty, Acting Premier of the Commune of France
Chief Organizer of the Brigadas Internacionales