Wolff, Milton

Milton (Milt) Wolff (1915-2008) was born in Brooklyn, NY to a working-class family. He left school at fifteen and worked in the New Deal 's Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1934. He later found work in a Manhattan garment factory and became politically active through membership in the Young Communist League. When the Civil War broke out in Spain he responded to a YCL appeal for volunteers and sailed for Europe, aged 21, in March 1937. He initially served as a medic and then saw action in a machine-gun unit of the Washington Battalion in the Battle of Brunete in July 1937. The depleted U.S. forces were merged with the Lincoln battalion and Wolf rose quickly through the ranks. He led his unit at Belchite and in the unsuccessful assault at Fuentes del Ebro, and was promoted to captain during the battle of Teruel in January 1938. As the Loyalist forces retreated across the Ebro, and regrouped for a final offensive, Wolff, aged 22, became commander of the Lincoln Battalion.

Wolff met Ernest Hemingway while on leave after Brunete, and forged with him an intense, lasting, and sometimes contentious friendship. Hemingway once described Wolff as being "as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg." On his return from Spain Wolff immediately became active in organizing support for Loyalist refugees and opposition to the Franco regime, and he remained active in a host of left-wing causes. Over the years he campaigned for civil rights -- and especially for the integration of the Brooklyn Dodgers, organized aid to Cuba, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and joined with other Lincoln veterans to send ambulances to Nicaragua.

In June 1942 he volunteered as a private in the U.S. Army infantry and went on to see action in Burma, where he received a field commission as a lieutenant, and other places. He served the OSS under General "Wild Bill" Donovan in building an intelligence network with Communist partisans in Italy, was a paratrooper in Italy, was a liaison to the Spanish Maquis in southern France, and served in India. After the War he found a variety of jobs, and developed his talents as a writer, painter, and photographer. Wolff made his home in California for many years, and died on January 14, 2008, only a few months before the dedication of the national monument to the U.S. volunteers in San Francisco.

From the guide to the Milton Wolff Photographs, 1939-1960, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)

Milton (Milt) Wolff (1915-2008) was born in Brooklyn, NY to a working -class family. He left school at fifteen and worked in the New Deal 's Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1934. He later found work in a Manhattan garment factory and became politically active through membership in the Young Communist League. When the Civil War broke out in Spain he responded to a YCL appeal for volunteers and sailed for Europe, aged 21, in March 1937. He initially served as a medic and then saw action in a machine-gun unit of the Washington Battalion in the Battle of Brunete in July 1937. The depleted U.S. forces were merged with the Lincoln battalion and Wolf rose quickly through the ranks. He led his unit at Belchite and in the unsuccessful assault at Fuentes del Ebro, and was promoted to captain during the battle of Teruel in January 1938. As the Loyalist forces retreated across the Ebro, and regrouped for a final offensive, Wolff, aged 22, became commander of the Lincoln Battalion.

Wolff met Ernest Hemingway while on leave after Brunete, and forged with him an intense, lasting, and sometimes contentious friendship. Hemingway once described Wolff as being "as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg." On his return from Spain Wolff immediately became active in organizing support for Loyalist refugees and opposition to the Franco regime. He served as National Commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (1939-41 and 1942-54), and worked closely over many years with the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, the Action Committee to Free Spain Now, the U.S. Committee for a Democratic Spain, the Civil Rights Congress, and the Smith Trials Bail Fund. He campaigned for the integration of the Brooklyn Dodgers, organized aid to Cuba, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and joined with other Lincoln veterans to send ambulances to Nicaragua.

During World War II he worked with the British Special Services before the U.S. entry into the War. He volunteered as a private in the U.S. Army infantry in June 1942 and saw action in Burma, served under General "Wild Bill" Donovan in the OSS building an intelligence network with Communist partisans in Italy, was a liaison to the Spanish Maquis in southern France, and served in India. He received a field commission as a lieutenant in Burma.

After the War he found a variety of jobs, and developed his talents as a writer, painter, and photographer. Among his published works are many articles in the Daily Worker, the New Masses, and other left periodicals, and an autobiographical novel, Another Hill (1994), and a volume of memoirs, Member of the Working Class (2005).

From the guide to the Milton Wolff Papers, 1938-2004, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)