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But once the crises of the first six months or so had passed and the militias were increasingly professionalized as the Popular Front army (this so-called militarization a micro-version of the historical professionalization of armies in the nineteenth century), the Republican leadership moved quickly to discourage women from functioning at the front lines as soldiers—notably, not so much for their own comfort or safety, but that of the male soldiers: “Republican soldiers were uncomfortable with the ''miliciana''. For the most part, men expected ''milicianas'' to do kitchen and laundry duties and to act as nurses.”{{sfn|Coleman|1999|p=49}}  One International Brigade soldier, for example, was “infuriated” by a women’s battalion that was fighting before the Segovia Bridge, for “women at the battle seemed to him the final degradation of the Republican side.”{{sfn|Thomas|1961|p=322}} Because such responses testified to male embarrassment and threatened the destruction of male morale, Republican officials launched a propaganda campaign whose slogan was “Men to the front / Women to the home front.”{{sfn|Coleman|1999|p=49}}
But once the crises of the first six months or so had passed and the militias were increasingly professionalized as the Popular Front army (this so-called militarization a micro-version of the historical professionalization of armies in the nineteenth century), the Republican leadership moved quickly to discourage women from functioning at the front lines as soldiers—notably, not so much for their own comfort or safety, but that of the male soldiers: “Republican soldiers were uncomfortable with the ''miliciana''. For the most part, men expected ''milicianas'' to do kitchen and laundry duties and to act as nurses.”{{sfn|Coleman|1999|p=49}}  One International Brigade soldier, for example, was “infuriated” by a women’s battalion that was fighting before the Segovia Bridge, for “women at the battle seemed to him the final degradation of the Republican side.”{{sfn|Thomas|1961|p=322}} Because such responses testified to male embarrassment and threatened the destruction of male morale, Republican officials launched a propaganda campaign whose slogan was “Men to the front / Women to the home front.”{{sfn|Coleman|1999|p=49}}


The Republican propaganda effort had a harsher side as well, the ''milicianas'' soon publicly redefined as prostitutes who endangered the army by transmitting sexual diseases. Allen Guttmann notes that the contemporary British and American publics were “fascinated by the females who fought {{pg|378|379}} with the Spanish militia in the early days of the war,”{{sfn|Guttmann|1962|p=11}} and he notes the pornographic combination of sex and violence in the overheated press descriptions of the ''milicianas'' as “Red Amazons, many of them actually stripped to the waist, carrying modern rifles, and with blood in their eye,” and as “supple-hipped Carmens of the Revolution, [who] for want of roses, toss bombs as they whirl.”{{sfn|Guttmann|1962|p=11-12}} Hemingway offers a variation on this perspective in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'': “The twenty-three-year-old mistress [of the Republican officer] was having a baby, as were nearly all the other girls who had started out as ''milicianas'' in the July of the year before.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=399}}
The Republican propaganda effort had a harsher side as well, the ''milicianas'' soon publicly redefined as prostitutes who endangered the army by transmitting sexual diseases. Allen Guttmann notes that the contemporary British and American publics were “fascinated by the females who fought {{pg|378|379}} with the Spanish militia in the early days of the war,”{{sfn|Guttmann|1962|p=11}} and he notes the pornographic combination of sex and violence in the overheated press descriptions of the ''milicianas'' as “Red Amazons, many of them actually stripped to the waist, carrying modern rifles, and with blood in their eye,” and as “supple-hipped Carmens of the Revolution, [who] for want of roses, toss bombs as they whirl.”{{sfn|Guttmann|1962|pp=11-12}} Hemingway offers a variation on this perspective in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'': “The twenty-three-year-old mistress [of the Republican officer] was having a baby, as were nearly all the other girls who had started out as ''milicianas'' in the July of the year before.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=399}}


After a Republican decree was issued that forbade women from fighting at the front, the “''miliciana'' icon” reappeared, now a “symbol of Republican resistance” rather than a celebration of military heroines, which was used “to inspire men to serve their patriotic duty.”{{sfn|Coleman|1999|p=50}} The balance between the female home front and the male war front was thus reestablished, at least as a useful fiction.
After a Republican decree was issued that forbade women from fighting at the front, the “''miliciana'' icon” reappeared, now a “symbol of Republican resistance” rather than a celebration of military heroines, which was used “to inspire men to serve their patriotic duty.”{{sfn|Coleman|1999|p=50}} The balance between the female home front and the male war front was thus reestablished, at least as a useful fiction.


But in point of fact, the “total war” strategy that Nazi Germany was practicing in Spain meant that besieged Madrid (and later Barcelona, as well as the infamous Guernica and other less famous towns) was itself a war front where women died daily without the opportunity to fight for the Cause or even to defend themselves. Martha Gellhorn observes in ''The Face of War'', a collection of her war correspondence, that “what was new and prophetic about the war in Spain was the life of the civilians, who stayed at home and had war brought to them  The people of the Republic of Spain were the first to suffer the relentless totality of modern war.”{{sfn|Gellhorn|1986|p=22}} Gellhorn describes her arrival in Madrid as follows: “I had not felt as if I were at a war until now. [The] whole city was a battlefield.”{{sfn|Gellhorn|1986|p=20–21}} Marion Merriman describes the combination of terror and frustration engendered by her own trip to Madrid: “In the trenches I had been nervous but not afraid. That was war. In the city I felt defenseless, trapped. In the city the bombing was a deep personal affront, with no reprisals except a soul-shaking hatred  There was no way to fight back.”{{sfn|Merriman|1986|p=139}} Gellhorn similarly describes “this helpless war in the city,” where women cannot fight back but can only scatter for cover “professionally, like soldiers.”{{sfn|Gellhorn|1986|p=32, 43}}  
But in point of fact, the “total war” strategy that Nazi Germany was practicing in Spain meant that besieged Madrid (and later Barcelona, as well as the infamous Guernica and other less famous towns) was itself a war front where women died daily without the opportunity to fight for the Cause or even to defend themselves. Martha Gellhorn observes in ''The Face of War'', a collection of her war correspondence, that “what was new and prophetic about the war in Spain was the life of the civilians, who stayed at home and had war brought to them  The people of the Republic of Spain were the first to suffer the relentless totality of modern war.”{{sfn|Gellhorn|1986|p=22}} Gellhorn describes her arrival in Madrid as follows: “I had not felt as if I were at a war until now. [The] whole city was a battlefield.”{{sfn|Gellhorn|1986|pp=20–21}} Marion Merriman describes the combination of terror and frustration engendered by her own trip to Madrid: “In the trenches I had been nervous but not afraid. That was war. In the city I felt defenseless, trapped. In the city the bombing was a deep personal affront, with no reprisals except a soul-shaking hatred  There was no way to fight back.”{{sfn|Merriman|1986|p=139}} Gellhorn similarly describes “this helpless war in the city,” where women cannot fight back but can only scatter for cover “professionally, like soldiers.”{{sfn|Gellhorn|1986|pp=32, 43}}  


Though the ''milicianas'' were banned from the battle front, ''guerrillerinas'' continued to work behind the fascist lines, as Maria Teresa Toral describes in her historical account, providing at great personal risk “aid to the {{pg|379|380}} wounded, to the hungry, to the sick guerrilla, who had descended from the sierra to the village.”{{sfn|Toral|1987|p=308}} In ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Hemingway creates an unforgettable portrait of a ''guerrillerina'' in the sympathetic and psychologically complex character of Pilar. A ''miliciana'' like many other women at the start of the war, she participated in her lover Pablo’s takeover of their village for the Republicans. When the fascists retook the village, she fled into the mountains as the only female member of Pablo’s guerrilla band, not providing food and nursing care to guerrillas who had descended to the village, as Toral describes, but participating in sabotage activities like Robert Jordan’s blowing of the bridge. Though General Golz had noted that “the more irregular the service, the more irregular the life,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=8}}  Pilar is a most irregular figure indeed. She announces, “Here I command” as she accepts “the allegiance. . . given [by the guerrillas]” once they lose confidence in the increasingly unstable Pablo.{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=53, 55}} She is admired as a model of courage by Robert Jordan: “You’re shaking, like a Goddamn woman. What the hell is the matter with you? . . . I’ll bet that Goddamn woman up above isn’t shaking. That Pilar.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=437}}
Though the ''milicianas'' were banned from the battle front, ''guerrillerinas'' continued to work behind the fascist lines, as Maria Teresa Toral describes in her historical account, providing at great personal risk “aid to the {{pg|379|380}} wounded, to the hungry, to the sick guerrilla, who had descended from the sierra to the village.”{{sfn|Toral|1987|p=308}} In ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', Hemingway creates an unforgettable portrait of a ''guerrillerina'' in the sympathetic and psychologically complex character of Pilar. A ''miliciana'' like many other women at the start of the war, she participated in her lover Pablo’s takeover of their village for the Republicans. When the fascists retook the village, she fled into the mountains as the only female member of Pablo’s guerrilla band, not providing food and nursing care to guerrillas who had descended to the village, as Toral describes, but participating in sabotage activities like Robert Jordan’s blowing of the bridge. Though General Golz had noted that “the more irregular the service, the more irregular the life,”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=8}}  Pilar is a most irregular figure indeed. She announces, “Here I command” as she accepts “the allegiance. . . given [by the guerrillas]” once they lose confidence in the increasingly unstable Pablo.{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=53, 55}} She is admired as a model of courage by Robert Jordan: “You’re shaking, like a Goddamn woman. What the hell is the matter with you? . . . I’ll bet that Goddamn woman up above isn’t shaking. That Pilar.”{{sfn|Hemingway|1968|p=437}}
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