This is a study of the 35,000 antifascists who joined the International Brigades in order to defend the Second Spanish Republic and of their encounters with civil-war Spain. Dr Adrian Pole offers the first in-depth history of the rich array of cross-cultural encounters which emerged between the multinational soldiers of all five International Brigades and the people, places, politics and culture of the country which accommodated them for almost three years of civil war. He sets out to recover the place of these encounters within the making, imagining and running of a transnational fighting force, showing how they influenced the volunteers' experiences and emotions, underlined their ideas and identities, informed their motivations and actions, and ultimately underpinned their ability to imagine, wage and justify the war.  In doing so, he demonstrates how they enabled thousands of transnational actors to define a deeply contentious conflict in their own very particular terms.

‘Making Antifascist War movingly reconstructs the International Brigades' interactions with the men, women, and children of civil war Spain. Exploring these complex transnational encounters, Adrian Pole offers new insights into the volunteers' sense of themselves as fighters in a global antifascist struggle.'

Lisa Kirschenbaum - West Chester University

‘Interest in the role of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War seems never to abate. As long as wide-ranging, original and challenging works like Adrian Pole's Making Antifascist War continue to appear that is likely to remain the case for a long time to come.'

Sir Paul Preston - London School of Economics