The March of The Peat Bog Soldiers

This is the story of how a song inspired imprisoned communists in Germany before lighting fire under the feet of Republican fighters in the Spanish Civil War.

A mournful song drifted over the moors of Lower Saxony in north-western Germany, over clumps of rugged reeds, smudges of sticky mud, fence posts, tile roofs and razor wire. The singers were dressed in rags. In their hands were spades.

Far and wide as the eye can wander,
Heath and bog are everywhere.
Not a bird sings out to cheer us.
Oaks are standing gaunt and bare.

It was 1933, the first year of Hitler’s chancellorship, and the choir were prisoners in a concentration camp called Börgermoor — pretty tame compared what would come later, but bad all the same. They were mostly communists and socialists, who Hitler had rounded up that year, using the Reichstag fire — blamed on a communist — as an excuse. Their dreams of a communist Germany were dead. Now their days were full of pointless labour; building simple mechanical parts, extending the camp to house the next lot of unfortunates and cultivating the moor. Every once in a while, they were permitted to put on an entertainment show for the other…