Journal of Modern European History

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) possessed a transnational resonance that echoed far beyond the borders of the country in which it was fought. It drew thousands of foreign fighters to Spain where, as many believed, the future of Europe would be decided. Most of them fought on the side of the embattled Republican government against an uprising supported by international Fascism. Given the foreign fighters’ similar socio-economic backgrounds and shared anti-Fascist sentiment, historians have suggested that the «International Brigades», formed out of these foreign fighters, constitute a true transnational army. This article suggests, however, that many of these foreign fighters had real trouble forging a transnational connection with their fellow fighters. Focusing on Dutch Interbrigadiers, it further highlights how the specificities of Dutch political culture and the legal regime created in the Netherlands combined to create a unique set of circumstances that impeded Dutch foreign fighters’ abilities to effectively work together with their German colleagues in Spain and their post-Spanish Civil War efforts to resist the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. This article suggests, therefore, that the International Brigades do not possess a single, distinctive and collectively transnational identity. Rather, they are made up of different identity layers that can, but need not, be mutually exclusive, and are linked to elements of different national and/or military cultures.

Thousands of Spaniards actively contributed to the defence of France in 1939/1940, whether as military contractors, legionnaires or soldiers of the Regiment de Marche de Volontaires Étrangers (RMVE). This paper focuses on three elements of their contributions. First, it investigates the importance of French internment camps for Spanish refugees’ that became key recruitment grounds for soldiers and labourers. Secondly, it will analyse the importance of the French General Staff's decision to veto the creation of Spanish autonomous units within the regular French armed forces, and how this compared to the situation of Polish and Czechoslovakian volunteers. Thirdly, the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 will be highlighted as a crucial turning point for French attitudes towards the recruitment of Spanish contractors and soldiers. Despite those changes in attitude, the Spanish contribution to France's defence in 1939/1940 – and to the French resistance – was never recognised by politicians in the post-war era. This is a fourth aspect of the entangled Franco-Spanish history of the Second World War that will be analysed in this paper, thereby highlighting how the memory battles between French Gaullists and Communists, reinforced by the context of the Cold War, left little space for the commemorative inclusion of «outsiders».

This article aims to diffenenciate the often simplistic depiction of war and occupation in Europe between 1939 and 1945 as a fight of good against evil. Such a description can be found not only in popular culture, but also, though less blatantly, in historical literature. Without questioning the overall responsibility of the Axis powers for the horrendous crimes committed during the war, this article argues for a more nuanced approach that takes into account the often complex nature of interaction between the occupiers and the occupied. Instead of invoking moral judgment, the authors aim to prioritize the historical analysis of the reality of Poland's occupation by the Nazis, recognizing that the parties involved had their own agency and often conflicting agendas. The authors apply this approach to two major phenomena: collaboration with, and resistance against the occupying forces. It thereby becomes clear that violence was exchanged not only between the occupants and the occupied, but also between different political and ethnic groups of the Polish society.

This article aims to shed light on how Nazi collaborators’ transnational encounters and exchanges generated attitudes and outlooks that are different and more diverse than those that one would be able to find when focusing solely on the issue of reintegration from the perspective of the nation-state framework. Military service in the German forces produced significant reconfigurations in the sense of identity and belonging of these non-German Nazis. Highlighting the Dutch example, we argue that such far-reaching experiences strongly affected the position to which these people aspired in the restored post-war nation-state. We will demonstrate their ambition to adapt their own outlook in some respects to the guiding principles of their liberal-democratic surroundings, and indicate the limitations as well as the opportunities that both state and society provided in the process.

The article addresses the similarities and differences between the Spanish and the Italian war experiences on the Eastern front (1941–1945) from a comparative perspective. Although both contingents, when seen from the German perspective, might have been considered to share similar characteristics, and they implemented relatively benevolent practices of occupation towards Soviet civilians, prisoners of war and Jews, there was also a huge imbalance regarding the figures of soldiers deployed on the East, as well as the numbers of prisoners of war. The Spaniards and the Italians fought on different sectors of the front, and were subject to quite diverse combat conditions, which set the condition for different degrees of brutalisation. Finally, the Italian withdrawal of 1942 left a tragic imprint on the memory of the Russian campaign of the survivors, while a comparable event did not exist in the Spanish case. Yet, the main similarity between the Spaniards and the Italians lies in the narratives and politics of memory regarding their participation at the Eastern front, which were developed by war veterans and the states of both countries during the post-war years. Regardless of the political differences between the Francoist regime and the Italian democracy, an enduring legend in the two countries emerged that presented the invading soldiers as «nice occupants», which were supposedly cleaner than the «clean Wehrmacht», while they attempted to detach themselves from the German war crimes in the East.