Anti-Fascist Medicine and the International Peace Campaign Against Urban Raids in Spain and China, 1936–1939

Between 1936 and 1939, an internationalist movement that perceived China and Spain as first stages of a global war against fascism raised funds for sending medical aid to both countries. The International Peace Campaign (IPC)—Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix (RUP) in its original name—was an international pacifist institution that opposed the non-intervention policies of Western countries toward the conflicts of Spain and China. It became a massive social movement that gathered people from different nationalities and backgrounds, from Communist internationalist cadres, religious and nationalist leaders, as well as writers and intellectuals. Meanwhile, the cities of Spain and China suffered from the systematic and massive air raids against civilian population. In July 1938, an international conference organized by the RUP/IPC was celebrated in Paris with the theme of raids against open cities and their impact from both political and sanitary perspectives. In it, the limitations of science and technology in bringing resistant population under control were highlighted as features of the relationship between colonialism, war and medicine. This chapter analyses this international campaign as a global and catch-all movement, which, although centered in the conflicts of Spain and China, also delved with other global issues like the crisis of the European empires in Asia and the consolidation of an anti-fascist and anti-imperialist movement.