The axiomatic claim that the volunteers ߢfought fascismߣ in Spain is often made in response to questions concerning their motivation for enlisting. Chapter three instead treats it as the starting-point for uncovering how they imagined, represented and engaged with the Nationalists and, in so doing, argues that the making of antifascist war was dependent on the making of fascist enemies. It traces the volunteersߣ vision of the conflict as a struggle between a sovereign nation and a fascist invader back to a transnational understanding of world politics before continuing the story within Spain itself, where representations of enemy soldiers as coerced Italian peasants, barbaric Moroccan mercenaries or ignorant Spanish conscripts reinforced their partisan interpretation of the violence and legitimised their own involvement within it. It then turns from abstract understandings of the enemy towards frontline encounters with flesh-and-blood soldiers. Whilst the volunteersߣ emotional responses therein were as varied as the kind of killing being done, they agreed that any feelings of sympathy had to be subordinated to the objective of violently defeating an uncompromising ideology.