Spanish Civil War

In 1936, Clara Thalmann travelled to Barcelona for the People's Olympiad,^[6] where she intended to compete as a swimmer.^[7] When the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War cancelled the planned events,^[8] she found herself fighting on the barricades during the Battle of Barcelona. Already a sympathiser of the anti-Stalinist left, she joined the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and helped produce its German language broadcasts.^[9]

She then enlisted with the anarcho-syndicalists of the Durruti Column, which went to fight on the Aragon front.^[10] According to her husband, Clara navigated the chaotic period of the early months of the civil war with relative ease. She quickly made contact with other European anti-fascist volunteers, forming the Durruti Column's International Group.^[11] She was only one of a handful of foreign women that fought on the front line,^[12] estimating 2% of the front line fighters in the confederal militias to have been women.^[13] She later wrote that she "scarcely considered herself a trailblazer or even a feminist."^[2]

She soon became disillusioned with the infighting that she observed among the ranks of the Spanish anarchists, instead gravitating towards the communists, who she saw as more organised. In early 1937, she left the Durruti Column and attempted to join up with the International Brigades, but she was rejected by the brigade's command, who declared that women "had no place in a professional army". She quickly returned to the Durruti Column but found that, in her absence, women had been purged from their ranks as well.^[14] But her experience in fighting allowed her to remain on the front line, even as other women volunteers were denied the same opportunity by vote of the male militiamen.^[15]

By April 1937, she had gravitated back towards the POUM,^[16] joining the party's "Shock Battalion" for a short time.^[17] She then turned her attention to the sectarian conflicts between various Trotskyist factions,^[18] helping to establish good relations between the POUM and the Italian anti-fascist refugees, who were largely organised around the Bolshevik–Leninists.^[19] She also became acquainted with the anarchist Friends of Durruti Group,^[20] which she alleged to have been under the direction of the German Trotskyist Hans Freund (aka "Moulin").^[21] Víctor Alba and Stephen Schwartz disputed the validity of this allegation, claiming it to have been motivated by a "Trotskyist disbelief" in the agency of anarchists to act without Marxist intervention and pointing out its alignment with similar Stalinist accusations against the group.^[22]

During the May Days of 1937, Clara was caught up in the fighting, finding herself on a rooftop with other members of the POUM militia, including the English journalist George Orwell.^[23] After the victory of the Republican government's forces, Thalmann and her husband attempted to flee the country by boat,^[24] but they were captured and imprisoned by the Communist Party of Spain (PCE).^[25] In prison, they sang each other Swiss folk songs, changing certain lines in order to inform each other on what they were being interrogated.^[14] Swiss courts also served Clara with a prison sentence, having tried her in absentia for recruiting Swiss people to fight in Spain.^[26] Following an appeal from the Labour and Socialist International,^[14] the couple was released from their Spanish prison and decided to flee to France.^[27]

World War II and after

Following the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent Nazi occupation of France, Clara mostly attempted to stay out of trouble, refusing to officially join the French Resistance due to her disappointment with the collapse of anti-fascism in Spain.^[26] Nevertheless, she still participated in individual acts of resistance, notably helping to hide Jewish refugees in Paris.^[28]

After the war, the Thalmanns threw their support behind the cause of Algerian nationalism and agitated against the totalitarian rule of Stalinism in the Soviet Union.^[3] But they eventually found themselves dissilusioned by both camps of the Cold War and resigned from political activity.^[26] They moved to the French Riviera in 1953, purchasing land near Nice.^[28] There they established the "Serena guesthouse",^[3] which formed an egalitarian community.^[26] With the development of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Thalmanns returned to activism, working with the student activists of the New Left.^[3]

Later life

In their later life, they contributed to documentaries about their lives and published their personal memoirs,^[29] which were released shortly before Paul Thalmann's death in 1980.^[30] The fidelity of many of the allegations made in their memoirs was challenged by Víctor Alba and Stephen Schwartz, who advised caution when reading them as a primary source.^[31] When Burnett Bolloten questioned Clara herself on her husband's allegations that "right-wing" members of the POUM had shot Trotskyists, she claimed to have had no knowledge of such executions occurring.^[32]

Following the Spanish transition to democracy, in 1983, Clara Thalmann and the German anarchist Augustin Souchy travelled back to Spain and revisited the sites they had fought in during the Spanish Civil War.^[3] The following year, she expressed regret for the excesses of the Red Terror in Spain, particularly disagreeing with the executions of nuns that had resulted from the outburst of violence at the beginning of the war.^[14] After returning from her trip, Clara Thalmann died in Nice in 1987.^[30]