{{Short description|American writer and veteran (1915–2008}} {{Use American English|date=January 2026}} {{Use mdy dates|date=February 2021}} {{Infobox military person | name = Milton Wolff | image = Milton Wolff, Adjuntant of Lincoln-Washington Battalion Dec 1937 Crop Edit.png | caption = Wolff in 1937 | birth_date = {{birth date|1915|10|7}} | birth_place = New York City, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|2008|1|14|1915|10|7}} | death_place = Berkeley, California, U.S. | allegiance = {{Flag|Spanish Republic}} <br> {{Flag|United Kingdom}} <br> {{Flag|United States}} | branch = 25px International Brigades<br />Special Operations Executive<br />{{army|United States}}<br />25px Office of Strategic Services | service_years = 1937–1938<br />1940–1945 | unit = The "Abraham Lincoln" XV International Brigade | rank = Battalion Commander<br />Lieutenant | commands = Lincoln Battalion | battles = {{tree list}} *Spanish Civil War **Battle of Brunete **Battle of Belchite **Battle of Quinto **Battle of Fuentes de Ebro **Battle of Teruel **Battle of Segura de los Baños **Battle of the Ebro *World War II **Burma campaign **Italian campaign {{tree list/end}} | module = {{Infobox officeholder | embed = yes | office = National Commander of the<br />Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade | 1blankname = Executive Secretary-Treasurer | 1namedata = {{ubl|Gerald Cook<br />Irving Goff {{small|''(Acting)''}}<br />David McKelvy White<br />Jack P. Bjoze<br />Mosess Fishman}} | term_start = December 24, 1939 | term_end = 1963 | predecessor = Paul Burns | successor = Steve Nelson }} }} '''Milton Wolff''' (October 7, 1915 – January 14, 2008) was an American writer and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, the last commander of the Lincoln Battalion of XV International Brigade, and a prominent communist.<ref name=NYTobit>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/obituaries/17wolff.html |accessdate=2022-12-14 |work=New York Times |date=January 17, 2008 |title=Milton Wolff, 92, Dies; Anti-Franco Leader |first=Douglas |last=Martin |authorlink=}}</ref><ref name="Douglas2008">Douglas, 2008.</ref>
==Early life== Wolff was born on October 7, 1915 into a working class Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, New York. His parents originally came from Lithuania and Hungary. He attended the New York School of Commercial Art<ref name=alba>{{cite web |title=Wolff, Milton |url=https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/milton-wolff/ |website=alba-valb.org |publisher=Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives |access-date=19 July 2025}}</ref> before joining the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.<ref name="Douglas2008"/> He became active in the Young Communist League on returning to Brooklyn after the CCC. It was there that he volunteered to go to Spain to fight fascism.<ref name="Douglas2008"/>
==Spanish Civil War== thumb|left|Wolff is greeted by his mother after returning home from Spain, December 15, 1938 In early 1937, Wolff set off to join the International Brigades in Spain, reaching Albacete by March. As a pacifist, a belief common in the 1930s, he originally wished to be a medic.<ref name="Douglas2008"/> However, after the International Brigades' heavy losses at the Battle of Jarama, he became a soldier instead, joining a machine gun company.<ref name="Douglas2008"/> "Largely self-educated, ... [he] was an intellectual".<ref name ="Eby319">Eby, p. 319</ref> He "detested elegant uniforms", customarily wearing "baggy trousers, a stained leather jacket" and, in wet weather, a "woolly poncho".<ref name ="Eby319"/>
After a year's fighting in Brunete, Belchite and Teruel, the Brigade lost two senior officers, David Doran and Robert Hale Merriman at the Gandesa battle on the Aragon front. After which, in March 1938, Wolff became the battalion commander.<ref name="Douglas2008"/> He led the now Lincoln-Washington Battalion during the Battle of the Ebro and left Spain in November 1938 when the International Brigades were demobilized. Ernest Hemingway described him during this period: [he was] "...23 years old, tall as Lincoln, gaunt as Lincoln, and as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg. He is alive and unhit by the same hazard that leaves one tall palm tree standing where a hurricane has passed."<ref>Notes by Hemingway on "Major Milton Wolff", in Davidson (1939).</ref>
==World War II== [[File:Milton Wolff 1942.jpg|thumb|left|Wolff in his U.S. Army uniform, 1942]] In 1940, Wolff volunteered for the British Special Operations Executive, and arranged arms for the European resistance organizations. After the United States' entry into World War II, Wolff volunteered for the U.S. Army infantry in June 1942.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Carroll |first1=Peter |title=The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade |date=1994 |publisher=Stanford University Press |location=Stanford, CA |isbn=0-8047-2277-3 |page=259}}</ref>
He saw action at the end of 1943 in Burma, where he earned a field commission as a lieutenant.<ref name=alba/> There, General "Wild Bill" Donovan met him and assigned him to the OSS to work with anti-fascist partisans in occupied Italy.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Carroll |first1=Peter |title=The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War |date=1994 |publisher=Stanford University Press |location=Stanford, CA |isbn=0-8047-2277-3 |page=260}}</ref>
In 1945, Wolff was one of 16 Army officers and enlisted men singled out as alleged Communists by the House Committee on Military Affairs. General Donovan came to their defense, citing their loyalty and effectiveness.<ref>{{cite news |title=Army Officers Accused of Radical Background |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/380780195/?match=1&terms=%22milton%20wolff%22 |access-date=19 July 2025 |work=Los Angeles Times |date=19 July 1945 |location=Los Angeles}}</ref>
==Later life== [[File:Abraham Lincoln Brigade Spanish War Veterans Collecting Clothing for the Red Army. 1941 Slide 2 Square Crop.png|thumb|right|upright=1.2|Wolff (right) and fellow Lincoln Brigade veteran Fred Keller pack clothes to be sent to the Red Army, 1941]] Wolff appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to defend VALB (Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade) from being banned as a Communist front organization. His explanation for his actions owed to his ancestry: "I am Jewish, and knowing that as a Jew we are the first to suffer when fascism does come, I went to Spain to fight against it."<ref>Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (2008)</ref>
According to historian Peter Carroll:
<blockquote>When Congress passed the McCarran Act in 1950, obliging all designated subversive organizations to register with the federal government and creating heavy penalties for leaders who refused to cooperate, the entire executive committee of the VALB resigned in 1950. In its place, two Lincoln veterans stepped forward: Wolff became the National Commander; Moe Fishman became the Executive Secretary/Treasurer...<ref name=moe>{{cite web |title=Fishman, Moses |url=https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/mosess-moe-fishman/ |website=alba-valb.org |publisher=Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives |access-date=19 July 2025}}</ref></blockquote>
However, newspaper accounts indicate Wolff was first elected National Commander in 1939.<ref>{{cite news |title=Spain Vets Meet Here, Ask Aid for Prisoners |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/1143486808/?terms=%22milton%20wolff%22&match=1 |access-date=26 July 2025 |work=Daily Worker |date=25 December 1939 |location=New York}}</ref> He was succeeded by fellow Lincoln Battalion commander Steve Nelson in 1963.<ref>{{cite web |title=Nelson, Steve |url=https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/steve-nelson/ |website=alba-valb.org |publisher=Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives |access-date=26 July 2025}}</ref>
thumb|left|upright=1.2|Wolff (right) with VALB attorney Homer C. Clay {{circa}} 1954
Wolff also battled fiercely for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. He even offered the services of the aging veterans of the Lincoln Brigade to the North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, who declined them. Later, Wolff campaigned against apartheid in South Africa, and raised money for ambulances in Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s, personally delivering twenty of them.<ref name="Douglas2008"/> Wolff completed two autobiographical novels, ''A Member Of The Working Class'' (published 2005) about his early life in New York, and ''Another Hill'' (published 1994) about his communist and Spanish experiences; he began a third book, ''The Premature Anti-Fascist'', describing his experiences after leaving Spain and during World War II, but did not finish it before his death.
{{quote|This extraordinary novel centers on one battalion, the Americans, known as the Lincolns, barely trained men who went into battle armed with 1903 Remington rifles. I have never read more intimate, convincing, and devastating accounts of combat.|Martha Gellhorn on ''Another Hill''}}
==Personal life== Wolff married and had two children. His family resided primarily in Stony Creek, Connecticut.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nelson |first1=Cary |title=Remembering Spain: Hemingway's Civil War Eulogy and the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade |date=1994 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Urbana |isbn=0-252-02124-X |page=16}}</ref> His first marriage ended in divorce. Wolff and his second wife are both buried at the Sunset View Cemetery in El Cerrito.<ref>[http://bayareapunk.com/blog/el-cerrito-left.html Leftists Who Called El Cerrito Home]. ''bayareapunk.com''. Retrieved January 14, 2019</ref>
==Works and features== *[https://archive.org/details/fascistspain00wolf/page/n2/mode/1up ''Franco Spain: Menace to World Peace''] (Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 1947). *''Another Hill: An Autobiographical Novel'' (1994; University of Illinois Press, 2001). {{ISBN|978-0-252-06983-3}} *''A Member of the Working Class '' (iUniverse, 2005). {{ISBN|978-0-595-37267-6}} *Wolff was featured in the film documentary ''The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War'' (1984).
==References== {{reflist|2}}
==Further reading== * Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (2008). [http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/lessons/jewish-volunteers-in-the-spanish-civil-war/jewish-volunteers-in-the-spanish-civil-war Jewish Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War] Accessed: March 11, 2010. * Davidson, Jo (1939). ''Spanish Portraits''. Georgian Press. * Eby, Cecil (2007). ''Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War''. Pennsylvania State University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-271-02910-8}} * Merriman, Marion; Lerude, Warren (1986). ''American Commander in Spain''. Reno: University of Nevada Press. {{ISBN|0-87417-106-7}} * {{cite news |last1=Sharpe |first1=Karen |title=Abe Lincoln Brigade Is Still Fighting |url=https://archive.org/details/berkeley-barb-vol.-27-no.-656-march-10-16-1978/page/5/mode/1up |access-date=3 August 2025 |work=Berkeley Barb |volume=27 |issue=656 |date=16 March 1978 |location=Berkeley}}
==External links== {{commons}} * [https://alba-valb.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Milton-Wolff-bio.pdf Milton Wolff biography] at Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives * [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/obituaries/17wolff.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin/ ''New York Times'' Obituary] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20051105010225/https://www.salon.com/books/feature/1999/07/14/papa/ "He Remembers Papa"] *[http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/alba_170/ Milton Wolff Papers] at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives * [http://www.alba-valb.org/ Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives/Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade] * [https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/photos_223_001/images/4b8gtwjz/ Organizations - Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - Milton Woolf.: undated] * [https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/photos_223_001/images/bvq83q84/ Delegation to Visit Senator Wagner (N.Y.) at Washington, D.C. Office.: circa 1939] * [https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/photos_223_001/images/qfttfb0q/ Committee for Free Spain. Portrait of M. Woolf and Jack (possibly Captain Jack White) Taken for the Committee. (Includes photo of film star Gene Kelly).: Sep 1946]
{{XV International Brigade}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolff, Milton}} Category:1915 births Category:2008 deaths Category:20th-century American Jews Category:20th-century American male writers Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers Category:20th-century American novelists Category:21st-century American Jews Category:21st-century American male writers Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers Category:21st-century American novelists Category:Abraham Lincoln Brigade members Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:American male novelists Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Category:Civilian Conservation Corps people Category:Jewish American non-fiction writers Category:Jewish American novelists Category:Jewish anti-fascists Category:Jewish socialists Category:Members of the Communist Party USA Category:Writers from Brooklyn Category:Military personnel from Brooklyn Category:People from Brooklyn Category:People of the Office of Strategic Services Category:Special Operations Executive personnel Category:United States Army personnel of World War II