Researcher: Sofia Thornley, Stuyvesant '25

William Oliver Aalto was born on July 16, 1916, to Finnish parents Elsa Aalto and Otto Aalto. He lived in the Bronx and attended Theodore Roosevelt High School. His mother, a militant member of the Finnish Communist Party, had fled from Finland to the United States because of her radical politics. Finland suffered from an intense wealth gap as a duchy under the Russian Empire before the Russian Revolution, leading to the rise in popularity of socialism and Finnish nationalism amongst the working class. Elsa raised William under her Marxist beliefs, obviously influencing his later decision to join the Young Communists League at the age of 19.


After leaving school, Aalto became a truck driver and a printer’s apprentice, living at 3327 De Lavall Avenue, Bronx, New York. On February 6, 1937, he sailed to Paris and arrived in Spain four days later. He first served as a driver for the XV International Brigade. He also eventually became the group commissar. The role of a commissar was to reinforce the political ideology to the other soldiers; the original Russian word politicheskiy rukovoditel is a portmanteau for political leader/instructor. This further underscores Aalto’s devotion and conviction to the communist cause; in a 1942 study conducted by Yale sociologist John Dollard, Aalto remarked, "A soldier who is politically conscious that he is right and who has a feeling of community with his society ... will do his job well."


Aalto became a guerrilla fighter who participated in dangerous missions that often took him behind enemy lines. He worked with other International brigaders, Alex Kunslich and Irving Goff, from New Jersey and New York, respectively, in demolitions. The group was trained by the Soviets supporting the Republic's cause in Spain. They destroyed railroads, bridges, and power lines; the operation to blow up the supply bridge running across the Albarracín River is believed to have inspired Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Goff himself criticized the novel for excessively romanticizing the war and misrepresenting guerrilla warfare.


Aalto participated in the Battle of Teruel at the end of 1937, again behind enemy lines with the brigaders and other guerrilla fighters. On May 27, 1938, he led an amphibious operation on the southern coast of Spain at Carchuna, Motril, successfully rescuing 300 Republicans imprisoned in the Fort of Carchuna. In September 1938, as the Republicans’ defeat loomed, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was disbanded. Aalto returned home on February 4, 1939, on the President Harding, almost exactly two years after he left America to fight.


In 1941, Goff recommended him for a role in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), an intelligence agency. The OSS’ role was to learn information through espionage, sabotage the opposition, and promote the US’ cause through propaganda during World War II. Aalto had already informed Goff of his homosexuality before being recommended, but the latter became uneasy over his decision. After following Aalto and observing him emerging from a bar with another man in Washington, Goff reported his concerns to William Donovan, who removed Aalto in April 1942.


Here, Goff represents the paradoxical limitations of the liberal ideology that he and many other members of the Lincoln Brigade embraced; their politics were seen as radical by other Americans, but they still could not bring themselves to accept Aalto's unproblematic identity, thus embracing the same conservative values as the rest of the country. All restrictions on sexuality in the military only ended with the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act in 2011. In 1942, however, military psychiatrists claimed that homosexuality was a “psychopathic personality disorder” that would make Aalto and other gay soldiers unfit to serve. These veterans could also be denied their benefits if their sexuality were discovered.


After being discharged, Aalto was transferred to Fort Ritchie in Maryland. In September 1943, he lost his hand in an incident while training soldiers in demolition. Later, Aalto studied poetry at Columbia. He published his pieces in the Marxist magazine New Masses, founded in New York City and closely tied to the Communist Party. The magazine was extremely popular among the political left of America. Aalto’s featured work includes the poem “On Patrol” and short story “The Wounded.” Aalto continued socialize with other writers and entered a relationship with James Schuyler, who won a Pulitzer for Poetry for his collection The Morning of the Poem. Aalto died in New York City at age 42 of leukemia. He is buried in Long Island National Cemetery.

Sources

Aalto, Will. 1944. “On Patrol.” New Masses 50, no. 10 (March): 11. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1944/v50n10-mar-07-1944-NM.pdf.


Aalto, Will. 1944. “The Wounded.” New Masses 51, no. 10 (June): 14. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1944/v51n10-jun-06-1944-NM.pdf.


“Aalto, William Oliver.” n.d. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Accessed June 15, 2025. https://alba-valb.org/volunteers/william-oliver-aalto/.


Carroll, Peter N.. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 1994. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503622265