Samuel George Montague Nathan (20 January 1895 – 16 July 1937) was an English soldier who served in the British Army during World War I, the Royal Irish Constabulary's Auxiliary Division during the Anglo-Irish War and the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. During his service in the Auxiliary Division, Nathan was suspected of being involved in the assassination of two Sinn Féin politicians, which later contributed to the alienation of Irish volunteers in the International Brigades from their British counterparts during the Spanish Civil War.

In the Spanish Civil War, Nathan initially commanded the British company of the majority-French Marseillaise Battalion but was appointed battalion commander in early 1937 following the execution of his predecessor for espionage. Nathan later became Chief of Staff of the XV International Brigade and was killed in action on 16 July 1937 at the Battle of Brunete. Even though he had been turned down in his attempt to join the Communist Party of Great Britain either because of his "sexual orientation" or because of his unwillingness to "pretend great political enthusiasm" - Comintern observers admired him for his "cool arrogance under fire".

Background

Samuel George Montague Nathan was born in Hackney, London in 1895. His father was Jewish and the Nathans had been settled in England since the 18th century. His mother was an Englishwoman and was a Christian. George Nathan himself was baptised into the Church of England at St Mark's, Bow Street on 24 January 1897. Although nominally raised an Anglican and identifying himself as such earlier in life, after 1917 he referred to himself as Jewish.

Military

World War I

During the First World War, he fought in the British Army on the Western Front. He rose from private to company sergeant major and "after three years and 334 days in the service, he was commissioned in the field on 9 April 1917" to become "the only Jewish officer in the Brigade of Guards". This is what he claimed but Nathan was, as his medal index card shows, commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and was never a CSM.

Irish War of Independence

In 1920, Nathan was discharged from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. On October of that year, Nathan joined the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and was posted to G Company as a Section Leader, being stationed at the Lakeside Hotel in Killaloe, County Clare. The Auxiliary Division was a paramilitary unit of the RIC and fought in the Irish War of Independence against the Irish Republican Army, working heavily in conjunction with paramilitary RIC constables known as the Black and Tans. Nathan was ordered to return to Dublin on 30 April 1921 and left the Auxiliary Division on 2 May 1921, returning to London.

During his service in the Auxiliary Division, Nathan was suspected of being involved with a series of assassinations in Limerick which took place on 7 March 1921, when the sitting mayor of Limerick, Sinn Féin politician George Clancy, councillor and former mayor Michael O'Callaghan and city clerk Joseph O'Donoghue were all shot and killed in their homes. Groups of plainclothes men had knocked on the door of each, claiming to be a search party and once inside struggled with each party, shooting them. George Clancy's wife Máire, who had struggled with the party before they shot her husband, identified George Nathan in a statement.

Spanish Civil War

After returning from Dublin, Nathan relinquished his commission and rejoined the British Army; this time the West Yorkshire Regiment as a private, but had left the military by October 1922 at his own request. Having spent his entire adulthood in the military, Nathan was ill-prepared for civilian life. He worked a number of jobs, such as being a doorman for Peter Jones, but was fired after trying to form a trade union. He also worked as a butcher. He briefly rejoined the Army as a private in the Royal Fusiliers but was discharged with ignominy after a Court Martial on 25 May 1926. He traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia in February 1928, intending to become a farmer, but only found work as a salesman, staying in Canada for some years. His financial state was poor and he wrote to the British Legion in 1935, requesting assistance.

The Spanish Civil War began in the summer of 1936 in the Second Spanish Republic, as a Nationalist insurgency was launched by elements of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces. In September 1936, the Communist International under the control of Joseph Stalin decided to found the International Brigades to assist the sitting Popular Front government (ranging from the bourgeois liberals of the Republican Union to the Marxist-Leninists of the Communist Party of Spain) of the Second Spanish Republic. Nathan elected to travel to Spain in December 1936, where he joined the mostly French Marseillaise Battalion of the XIV International Brigade, as a Captain of the British Company with it.

In January 1937, the British Battalion of the XV International Brigade was founded, training at Madrigueras. However, problems emerged when some Irish members were unhappy about being referred to as part of a "British Battalion" (the Communist name of the Saklatvala Battalion had not caught on and the Spanish referred to them even more offensively as "el batallón inglés"). The tension was such that Nathan, confronted, said to Frank Ryan and the other Irishmen that he had indeed served the Auxiliaries in County Limerick.<blockquote>"If you want to shoot me for what happened in Ireland, all right, but I was under orders."</blockquote>Nathan denied being a fascist, saying he had come to Spain to fight fascism and that "we are Socialists together now." Joe Monks claims that, "the meeting responded to the spirit of his speech and clapped him."

Sources

  • Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006.
  • Bennett, Richard, "Portrait of a Killer", New Statesman, 24 March 1961, pp 471–472
  • Cook, Judith. Apprentices of Freedom. Quartet Books, 1979.
  • Eby, Cecil. Comrades and Commissars, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.
  • Gurney, Jason. Crusade in Spain, 1974.
  • Copeman, Fred. Reason in Revolt, 1948. Blandford Press
  • McGarry, Fearghal. Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War, 1999, Cork University Press.
  • Monks, Joe. With the Reds in Andalusia, 1985, John Cornford Poetry Group.
  • Szurek, Alek. The Shattered Dream, 1989. Columbia University Press.
  • Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War, 1961. 1st ed.
  • Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War, 2003. 4th Rev. Ed

References

  • George Samuel Montague Nathan at TheAuxiliaries.com