HOMAGE TO LOWLIFE McCORMICK

A Nazi salute in New York Harbor

I’d always considered the Abraham Lincoln Brigade one of the prouder episodes in our history. But what preceded it was prouder still.

In the 1930’s, a democratically elected Republic in Spain fought for its life against a right wing rebellion led by General Francisco Franco, supported by the reactionary forces of the Church, the great landowners, and the monarchy. (Any of this sounding familiar?) The newly born Fascist states of Germany and Italy poured men and guns into Franco’s forces and used Spain as a testing ground for new technologies, including dive-bombing of civilian populations. The western democracies, however, sat on their hands—worse, actually, they enforced an embargo on support to the Spanish Republic in the name of neutrality.

This did not sit well with some. The International Brigades, comprising 40,000 volunteers from dozens of countries, formed to reinforce the Spanish fight against Fascism. Many were Communists. Nobody cared. At the time, the Depression was raging and World War I was a fresh memory; Communism was viewed as a response to the collapse of the old order. America’s component in the international force was the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War is a stunning 1983 documentary about the Lincolns. Narrated by Studs Terkel, John Housman, and Colleen Dewhurst, it consists primarily of interviews with brigade survivors.

Which is how I found out about the Bremen incident.

In July 1935 the German luxury liner Bremen sailed into New York harbor flying an oversized Swastika flag. Its pier was the site of increasingly large and increasingly rowdy American antifascist demonstrations. But on the night she was intended to resume her cruise, the crowd included top-hatted American dignitaries honoring the pride of Hitler’s peacetime fleet. To their horror, six young men broke through a police cordon and stormed the gangway. One, labor organizer and working seaman Bill Baily—armed, presumably, with nothin’ but a fine-toothed comb—later said that their way was blocked by a German officer. “Vos is los, vos is los?” the Nazi sailor cried.

Baily’s pal Lowlife McCormick—I am not making this up—rose to the occasion. Baily is not specific as to how he dealt with the officer. One imagines the intrepid knickerbocker said something like “Vos is los? A knuckle sammich, that’s what’s los, ya kraut!”

Their path cleared, Bill and Lowlife made their way to the jack mast from which the Swastika flew. As their friends held off the Nazi crew they struggled to get it off the line. Succeeding at last, they threw the Fascist banner into New York Harbor. The crowd on the pier erupted.

Bill, Lowlife, and their four companions were tried as the Bremen Six in what was then Manhattan Police Court. The presiding magistrate dismissed the unlawful assembly and assault charges laid against them on the ground that the Swastika was no more than the “black flag of piracy.”

The Germans were pissed. And how. They demanded—and, shamefully, got—an apology from the United States. Interestingly, at that time the Swastika was only one of several official flags of the new Reich, and initial diplomatic fumfering had posited that for that reason the event could not be viewed as a desecration. Germany therefore disposed of the competitors and made it the nation’s sole flag.

That was some night’s work for the Bowery Boys.

Bill Baily went on to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Later, when America entered the war he served in the Merchant Marine; afterwards he had a hard time keeping a job because of McCarthy’s blacklists. His pal Lowlife is lost to history. But they, like many of our fathers and grandfathers, when confronted with Fascism, stood the fuck up.

So the next time you see a red MAGA hat, or a Let’s Go Brandon T shirt, or a Tesla, think of Bill Baily and Lowlife McCormick.

You’ll know what to do.

The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War is available on YouTube