The Premature Antifascist

"The causes supported by the VALB often put them at odds with official U.S. government policy. This, combined with official suspicion of the political motives of Spanish civil war veterans, led to decades of problems for veterans of that conflict. Thus... instead of eagerly mobilizing the only Americans with recent combat experience at the beginning of World War II, the government actively sought to keep the men from the front because of suspicions about their loyalty." (from "New Acquisition Makes Library a Major Center for Spanish Civil War Research")

Milton Wolff volunteered for British Special Services in 1940. His antifascist connections made him valuable in dealing with European resistance movements, but unlike the average soldier, he longed to get to the front and fight fascism directly.
Unfortunately, his very experience made him suspect to the U.S. military, and he spent most of the war being transferred from one stateside camp to another as a "premature antifascist." He eventually saw action in Burma, and General "Wild Bill" Donovan then got him assigned to the O.S.S. to work with the resistance in occupied Italy.

In The Premature Antifascist, Wolff puts his efforts to reach the front, intermingled with the complexities of married life, to good fictional effect as Mitch Castle returns from Spain only to be caught up in American Communism and reaction to Stalin's 1939 pact with Hitler; the same old triangle with his self-effacing high-school girlfriend and his brother's vehemently Catholic mistress; and the need to find work.

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