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This is an introduction to a special issue on the role played by veterans of the Spanish Civil War's International Brigades during the Second World War. It argues that the study of these veterans is worthwhile for three reasons: the extraordinary mobility that the antifascist struggle of the years 1936–45 enabled; the microcosm it provides for the assessment of what happens when ideologically fuelled concerns meet pragmatic wartime needs; and the relevance of how governments and military organizations have dealt with suspect returnees in the past for present-day dilemmas that several governments face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the trajectories of a small group of Albanian veterans of the Spanish Civil War after leaving Spain, in early 1939. By focusing on the way in which Albanian veterans reached the European resistance movements between 1941 and 1943, we both enhance and problematize our understanding of the European resistance movement as a transnational phenomenon with its roots in the Spanish Civil War. This article aims to contribute further to a better understanding of the longue durée of the anti-fascist fight between 1936 and the end of the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

About 700 Dutchmen joined the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) to fight Franco specifically and fascism generally. After 1945, both surviving veterans and those writing their histories agreed that after their return, they continued their fight against fascism in Nazi-occupied Holland. This article presents a microhistory of the trajectory of three Dutchmen, and finds the links between Spain and resistance in these three cases neither obvious nor very strong. In doing so, this article highlights not only the wide varieties of anti-fascist experiences, but also emphasizes the twists in turns in how these were subsequently refashioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the profile of several contributors of the periodical including Nir Arielli is associate professor of International History at the University of Leeds; Fraser Raeburn is a scholar specialising in the history of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War; and Christine Haynes is associate professor of European History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.