Colombia proved a crucial turning pt for Hirschman. As a development economist, Hirschman became unusual for his time in doing extensive fieldwork. In part due to his “non-traditional” background, he developed a wry literary style that poked fun at sweeping mathematical models.
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When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Hirschman rushed to Spain. He enlisted in the POUM, a Trotskyist militia which George Orwell later joined.
Hirschman likely fought at the Battle of Monte Pelado, a costly defeat for the Fascists.
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After 3mo on the front lines, Hirschman went to Italy, to join his sister Ursula. He became involved in the anti-Mussolini underground, carrying messages in a false-bottomed suitcase.
Somehow he also found the time to finish his doctorate in economics!
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Resurgent antisemitism sent him back to France, where he joined the French Army, and was trained up just in time for them to surrender.
As a natural target for the Nazis, Hirschman adopted a false identity and joined the thousands of refugees fleeing south to Marseilles.
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There he met Varian Fry, an American organizing an underground to rescue Jews from occupied France. Hirschman soon became Fry’s right hand man, forging passports and scouting routes through the Pyrenees.
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It’s estimated that, w Hirschman’s help, Fry’s group saved over 2000 people—including Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, and Marcel Duchamp.
(The 2023 Netflix series Transatlantic—which I haven't yet seen—covers Hirschman's remarkable work w Fry.)
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Only when the Vichy police started asking q about Hirschman himself did he make his discreet exit.
Hirschman hiked across the Pyrenees, made his way to Lisbon, and boarded a ship to America—where he would soon start a research fellowship at UC Berkeley.
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Hirschman had fought fascism in four countries, earning two graduate degrees along the way.
He was still just 25 years old.
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At Berkeley, he met Sarah Chapiro, another Jewish emigre, in Berkeley’s I-House cafeteria. They married soon after.
When America went to war in 1941, Hirschman enlisted, and served on the Italian front (his 3rd army in 5 years).
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Hirschman had by all accounts a “quiet” war—save at the end, when he was picked to interpret at the very first Allied War Crimes trial, for German Gen Anton Dostler.
Newspapers report the interpreter’s face turning pale when he translated the death sentence.
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After the war, Hirschman helped work on the Marshall Plan and European reconstruction, till suspicion of his wartime leftism pushed him out of DC.
Almost on a lark, he took an offer w the World Bank to go to Colombia—beginning his long+fruitful connection to development.
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This tendency, Paul Krugman has argued, pushed Hirschman’s ideas out of the mainstream of economics.
And it’s also why I think his ideas are ripe for a comeback.
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In my post, I go into greater detail on Hirschman’s ideas, and their relation to modern development economics. His approach of “petite idées”, informed by empirical observation, seems the model for a clear-eyed way of thinking about development.
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