Far too little academic attention has been paid to more contemporary forms of transnational anti-fascist militancy. Yet this study supports the idea that this field of anti-fascist activity has remained important. This article examines transnational anti-fascist militancy in the 1990s through a case study of Britain's Anti-Fascist Action (AFA). In doing so it offers an in-depth account of AFA's attempts to establish an international militant anti-fascist network in conjunction with Germany's Autonome Antifa (M). The article identifies the common interests, challenges and limitations of this network. The final part of his article reflects on the cross-border importation of AFA to the Irish Republic.

The quotation in this title expresses a dilemma, as the ‘dark millions’ were likely to remain ‘unavenged’ so long as authors were asked to take sides on the Spanish Civil War rather than colonial oppression. Indeed, anti-fascism might well be thought of as, in a sense, antithetical to anti-imperialism. This article explores the relationship between anti-fascism and anti-imperialism, focusing on Britain and France. The first part looks at anti-imperialism in the era of the Popular Front; the second looks at how the tensions between anti-fascism and anti-imperialism were played out in the case of the major conflicts of the later 1930s in Abyssinia, Spain and China; the third discusses the imperialist assumptions of many anti-fascists. The article concludes by looking at the early phase of the Second World War.

Conventionally, the starting point of socialist and communist resistance to fascism in Europe and the creation of a European ‘culture of anti-fascism’ is dated to the 1930s in the context of the establishment of the Third Reich in 1933 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The hypothesis of the article is that the initiatives and debates of 1923 played a pivotal role in the creation of the transnational anti-fascist movement that transferred cultures of anti-fascism across borders in Europe and the world. The aim of the article is to analyse the first, but hitherto forgotten, efforts to make anti-fascism a transnational phenomenon in the early 1920s. Further, the article will discuss whether there are clear continuities or discontinuities in the anti-fascist articulations of 1923 and the ones created after 1933.

Between the late 1930s and early 1940s Mexico City and Buenos Aires became the centres of activity for the two most relevant anti-fascist organisations of German-speaking exiles in Latin America: the communist-inspired Free German Movement (Bewegung Freies Deutschland; BFD) and the social-democratic oriented The Other Germany (Das Andere Deutschland; DAD). Both organisations envisaged the creation of an anti-fascist front within Latin America, one which would allow for greater unity of action, and thus carried out extensive congresses at Mexico City and Montevideo in 1943. Due to crucial ideological and tactical differences, this dream of anti-fascist unity led to a power struggle between BFD and DAD, well illustrated in the impact it had on Bolivia. This article seeks a new perspective on how, thanks to the establishment of transnational networks, a continental debate on the meaning and methods of anti-fascism then took place, while also shedding light on the influence the Latin American context had in shaping the exiles’ plans for a new Germany.

Anti-fascism – a hallmark of the left since the 1930s, and a vague term for active opposition to Italian fascism, German Nazism and similar movements in the interwar period – used to be studied as a brief episode in the history of European nation states. The available syntheses read like collections of national studies with a clear European or Western focus. However, methodological nationalism may soon become a thing of the past – the last few years have brought a transnational turn in anti-fascist studies, which this special issue tries both to illustrate and to discuss.

Ethno-nationalist exiles in the interwar period were a unique species. While some of them relied on their own diasporic networks and waited for a chance, others established agitation platforms and regarded themselves as an alternative International of the ‘oppressed peoples’. Most of these alliances ended in failure, as it proved extremely difficult to reconcile the demands stemming from divergent national claims, such as those of autonomist factions versus irredentist or pro-independence groups, or those of national minorities seeking reintegration into their motherland as opposed to groups seeking independence. This article explores the relationship between minority nationalist exiles and anti-fascism by focusing on three issues: the emergence and evolution of ‘international alliances’ of minority activists in interwar Europe; contacts and ideological exchanges between ethno-nationalist exiles and liberal and anti-fascist segments of European public opinion and, finally, the emergence of a transnational anti-fascist nationality theory.

Far too often studies in contemporary history have concentrated on national stories. By contrast, this article analyses wartime discourses about and practices against fascism in France, Germany and Italy in a comparative and – as far as possible – transnational perspective. By looking at individual biographies some general aspects of socialist anti-fascism, as well as similarities and differences within anti-fascism, shall be identified and start to fill the gap which Jacques Droz left in 1985 when he ended his Histoire de l'antifascisme en Europe with the outbreak of the Second World War. To visualise the transnational dimension of socialist anti-fascism both in discourse and practice different categories shall be considered. These include historical analyses and projects for the post-war order in letters, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and books, acts of solidarity like mutual aid networks set up by groups and institutions and forms of collaboration in resistance movements.

This article aims to explore the interplay between religion and political radicalism in Europe by focusing on the case of Italian ‘White Leagues’ (Catholic trade unions) in the interwar period. Interest in this movement stems partly from the opinion that the understanding of politics in early twentieth-century Europe has often been distorted by the historiographical focus on the political polarisation between communism and fascism, which has led to the neglect of the complex ideological area in between. The article will focus in particular on the main organiser of the peasant ‘White’ unions in Italy, Guido Miglioli. He developed a network of political contacts across Europe with the aim of resuscitating the anti-fascist struggle in Italy and launching a campaign for the liberation of the peasantry. This was to be achieved through a European peasant International that would draw from the Soviet example while maintaining its Christian roots.

This article seeks to explain the emergence of the European Council at the heart of Europe's governance between 1975 and 1986. It highlights four factors that quickly made the newly-created institution both indispensable and stable, despite concerns over the excessive reliance on the intergovernmental method in European cooperation processes. These factors were the rise of globalisation in its multi-faceted policy dimensions, a satisfactory new-found institutional balance, the public impact of societal actors’ connections with regular and frequent heads of government meetings and the democratic legitimacy issue in European integration. The article further argues that this period witnessed the de facto emergence of the three-pillar Maastricht structure and shows how the study of the early days of the European Economic Community can shed light on the current development of the European Union and the European Council after the 2009 Lisbon Treaty.

Common historical narratives of Finnish European policy emphasise the sudden and dramatic change of 1991–1995, when Finland, as a reaction to the collapse of the Soviet Union, rejected its previously cautious approach and wholeheartedly embraced the goal of joining a unified Europe. This article, however, shows that, already in the mid-1980s, the Finnish political and economic elites questioned the country's position in the Cold War order and took bold steps in order to forge closer relations with Western Europe. A key event was the struggle for membership in Eureka, a novel European project designed to enhance cooperation in high technology.

Focusing on events on the south-east Ulster frontier, this article seeks to think afresh about the sectarian dimensions of republican violence on the Irish border amid the twin upheavals of revolution and partition. Drawing on a variety of primary sources, it questions a number of the intuitive notions that surround the phenomenon. In doing so, it highlights the limitations of the current discourse on sectarian violence and aims to encourage a more nuanced appreciation of the complex processes and behaviours that both facilitated and limited such violence at a grassroots level.

Many of the forms and practices of interwar internationalism were recreated under the auspices of the Nazi ‘New Europe’. This article will examine these forms of ‘Axis internationalism’ by looking at Spanish health experts' involvement with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Despite the ambiguous relationship between the Franco regime and the Axis powers, a wide range of Spanish health experts formed close ties with colleagues from Nazi Germany and across Axis and occupied Europe. Many of those involved were relatively conservative figures who also worked with liberal international health organisations in the pre- and post-war eras. Despite their political differences, their opposing attitudes towards eugenics and the tensions caused by German hegemony, Spanish experts were able to rationalise their involvement with Nazi Germany as a mutually-beneficial continuation of pre-war international health cooperation amongst countries united by a shared commitment to modern, ‘totalitarian’ forms of public health. Despite the hostility of Nazi Germany and its European collaborators to both liberal and left-wing forms of internationalism, this phenomenon suggests that the ‘New Europe’ deserves to be studied as part of the wider history of internationalism in general and of international health in particular.

The contributors to this special issue have taken up the challenge of reconsidering some of the fundamental assumptions that have traditionally underpinned the history of internationalism. In doing so their articles (some more explicitly than others) have addressed two central questions: who were the internationalists and where was internationalism taking place? The answers to these questions seem deceptively simple. However, as the articles in this issue have demonstrated, agents of internationalism are as diverse in age, gender and social status as the fields in which they operate.

This article investigates the development of communities of practice in Thai-border Cambodian refugee camps for those international humanitarian workers involved at the frontiers of the Cold War. Under the management of the United Nations Border Relief Operation (UNBRO) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) these camps brought together various NGOs and volunteers. Their prolonged presence at the border of Thailand enabled an epistemic community to emerge which facilitated the production of knowledge on refugees. Using oral histories and the archives of NGOs, this article investigates the development of an international community of practice in which Europeans played a key role, one which centred on the medical and social needs of refugees at a time of acute political instrumental use of humanitarian aid. The focus of humanitarians' work on genocide and associated trauma, resulted in a clear political awareness that humanitarian aid had been used to maintain Khmer Rouge presence at the borders and that, in the peace negotiations of the early 1990s, it might facilitate their territorial and political return to a position of power.

This article focuses on humanitarians by studying the interactions between the International Committee of the Red Cross and one of his delegates, George Montandon, between 1919 and 1922. Montandon was charged with a fact-finding mission in Siberia that set the basis for larger repatriation plans on behalf of prisoners of war from the Central Powers. This article explores the nature and circulation of expertise – formal and informal – in connection with Montandon's private and professional life before the mission, during the mission itself and once the mission was over. Being a delegate for the ICRC was not a profession but rather a break from established professions as doctors, military officers and scholars in Switzerland. However, experts associated with the work of the Geneva organisation at the headquarters and at the ground level brought a vast set of skills to international humanitarianism. Through a spectrum of transnational connections and networks, at the end of the First World War the ICRC experienced processes of specialisation and standardisation of tasks which had already started in wartime. This article argues that the impulse towards an increasing professionalisation of humanitarianism ‘clashed’ with the ambiguities of the ICRC's mandate, on the one hand, and the tensions between the agency of individual relief workers and the institutions they represented, on the other.

This article examines how and when democracy entered the discursive politics of the European Community to become one of the fundamental tenets of European political identity – and in the process influenced how decision-makers approached the question of enlargement. Building on multiple archival sources, the article traces how all three Community institutions (Commission, Council and European Parliament) legitimised the expansion and continuation of the process of European integration through the discursive construction of democracy. It focuses on the debates elicited by the attempts of southern European countries to accede to the EEC in the 1960s and 1970s.

In May 1951 the Women's International Democratic Federation – a communist-sponsored non-governmental organisation – sent an all-female international commission to investigate the war crimes and atrocities allegedly committed by United Nations forces against civilians during the military occupation of North Korea in late 1950. Communist internationalism has been relatively marginalised in the recent wave of scholarship on internationalism and international organisations. This article uses the Women's International Democratic Federation mission to Korea to analyse how the shifting relationship between communist internationalism, human rights and feminism played out in the ‘Third World’ during the early Cold War.

The article analyses forms of international scientific exchange practised by Polish medical experts around 1900. Applying a transnational historiographical approach it asks whether and how the Polish nation mattered to Polish bacteriologists and epidemiologists travelling abroad or communicating with colleagues internationally. It shows that in the 1880s and 1890s the Warsaw bacteriologist Odo Bujwid rarely connected his scientific knowledge to Polish national causes but rather benefited from imperial structures. What was more, he transcended the borders between the two nationalised bacteriological thought styles of Louis Pasteur on the one hand and Robert Koch on the other. Bujwid thus eluded a clear link between science and nationalism. His practices of international scientific exchange can be called ‘transnational’. When a Polish state was re-established in 1918 bacteriology and epidemiology became closely entwined with Polish state- and nation-building. Polish medical scientists now worked for Polish state institutions and acted as state representatives in the international arena. International exchange and border-crossing scientific mobility now served, first of all, to underline Polish statehood and to present it as a modern and civilised country. These practices of international scientific exchange can be described as ‘Olympic Internationalism’.

The long-running BBC sitcom, ’Allo ’Allo!, has been thoroughly criticised for its use of various racial, gendered and sexualised tropes, not to mention its cynical view of the French experience of the Second World War. This article, however, reassesses the programme in light of what it highlights about the lived experience of Anglo-American airmen who were forced to bale from their planes over Occupied France. It uses the comedic aspects of the programme to investigate escape and evasion training, the use of language, ‘fitting in’ and the prominence of peasants in the wartime lives of Anglo-American aircrews in France. The programme, rather than being just another example of Gaullophobia, accurately represents some elements of the Second World War in France. In addition, changes in the plot over its nine seasons suggest that the sitcom reflects broader British concerns, as well as the Anglo-French relationship.

This article examines the officers who led the Habsburg Army during the First World War. It highlights the complexity of their identities, demonstrating that this went well beyond the a-national – nationalist dichotomy in much historiography. It also argues that these officers' identities had a profound impact on how their army functioned in the field. The article first studies the senior command in 1914–16, showing how its wartime learning processes were shaped by transnational attitudes. These officers had belonged in peace to an international military professional network. When disaster befell their army at the outset of the First World War, it was natural for them to seek lessons from foreign armies, at first from their major enemies, the Russians, and later their German allies. The second half of the article explores the changing loyalties of the reserve officers tasked with frontline command in the later war years. It contends that the officer corps' focus on maintaining social and educational standards resulted in an influx of middle-class junior leaders whose conditional commitment to the Empire and limited language skills greatly influenced the Habsburg Army's record of longevity but mediocre combat performance.