The volunteers of the International Brigades are well known for their participation in the battles of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), yet their encounters with the people, places and politics of Spain are yet to receive substantial attention from historians. This is the first interpretive analysis of their wide-reaching work with children, which spanned from the holding of fiestas to the establishment of costly homes. By considering these cross-cultural encounters, it highlights how they understood themselves to be members of a unified anti-fascist community in which Spanish children themselves had a key role to play. While these children were invariably regarded as the principal victims of ‘fascism’, they were also encouraged to take an active interest in the violent struggle of the Brigades as well as the building of an anti-fascist ‘New Spain’. Their own letters and drawings show the surprising extent to which the volunteers succeeded in their efforts.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish anarchist movement became not only the driving force behind a social revolution but an active participant in an increasingly modern conflict which would eventually see thousands of its affiliates and militants serving on the frontline within the Republican Army. This article proposes to examine how military images, themes and symbols came to dominate anarchism's wartime culture, in the process reconciling their antimilitarist ideals with front-line service and asserting their exceptional quality as antifascist warriors. Examining a geographically and ideologically broad set of cultural materials, this article demonstrates a high degree of participation by many sections of the anarchist movement in the heavily militarised culture of the wartime Republic and European antifascism. This manifested itself in cults of battlefield heroism, the veneration of combative masculinity and the situating of ‘the front’ as the moral centre of the movement.

Drawing on government documents as well as the papers of renewable energy advocates, this article looks at debates over alternative energy in West Germany during the 1980s. It shows that because West Germany's monopolistic electricity market was dominated by utilities companies reticent to invest in alternatives, struggles over access to the electric grid and the rates independent producers received for their electricity were essential to efforts to add renewables into the German energy mix after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The legislated ‘feed-in tariff’ for electricity generated by individuals from renewable sources, which emerged from these debates in 1990, cemented the idea that individual Germans, not utilities or the state, were responsible for the fate of renewable energy in Germany and paved the way towards an ‘economically viable’ renewables sector.

The tripartite pact, concluded by Germany, Italy, and Japan in 1940, sought to create a new global order. This article is part of a broader shift in scholarship, inspired by global and cultural history. Instead of revisiting the decision-making that led to the pact's conclusion, this article explores the pact through the dialectics of culture and power. Through an archive-based interpretation of the pact's signing and the celebrations of its anniversaries from 1941 until 1945 that involved ordinary people in Axis-dominated territories around the world, the central mechanisms of this global fascist alliance become clear. A performative diplomacy of power and unity held the alliance together. Style and substance were not mutually exclusive categories of tripartite politics; instead, ‘real’ and representational politics shaped each other. The pact was a concerted attempt by the three signatories to transform global political structures and supersede the purported global hegemony of the liberal democracies.

This article examines the advice columns of a Spanish anarchist periodical, La Revista Blanca, in the 1930s. It considers how this example of interactive media, influenced by wider European scientific discourses including eugenics, contributed to shaping anarchist socio-sexual morality. By analysing the periodical's discussions of bodies, birth control, and ‘free love’, the article draws attention to anarchism's inherent tension between the free will of individuals and their obligations to collective progress. It asks how this tension played out at the intersection between anarchist sexual revolution and ‘women's emancipation’, and by extension how we might situate anarchist women in ‘feminist’ history.

This article examines British planning for a post-war international order which took place throughout the spring and summer of 1944. The history of this planning process has been largely overlooked in the historiography examining both the creation of the United Nations organisation as well as British diplomacy in the period. When historians have addressed the creation of the organisation, focus has been on the efforts of the Roosevelt administration, usually at the expense of the other great and small powers who contributed in important ways. The work here describes how British officials ordered their thinking on the post-war world and assembled detailed plans for what would become the United Nations organisation. Importantly, the planning in these months involved a concurrent effort to develop an alternative ordering mechanism for the European continent – known as the ‘Western Security Group’ – which, in theory, might balance against a revanchist Germany and hostile Russia. There was thus, by the summer of 1944, a new grand strategy for the post-war period, one which rested on the seemingly paradoxical positions of a world organisation and a balance of power on the European continent. Understanding how British officials arrived at this policy – and specifically how they aligned these disparate strategic strands of regional and international planning – shines light on an important element in the intellectual thought and diplomatic practice of British statesmen in this most consequential of periods.

When Nazi officials surrendered to the Allied powers on 8 May 1945, gay German men hoped fervently that their suffering had come to an end. Ten years earlier, the fascist government had promulgated draconian new laws criminalising all forms of male same-sex behaviour. After the war, as Allied officials embarked on an extensive programme of democratic renewal in the occupied lands, gay men hoped that democratisation would mean the repeal of these laws. Yet, the new West Germany retained the Nazi-era laws until 1969, convicting over 50,000 men in those twenty years. Using petitions to government officials as well as essays in and letters to the editors of homophile magazines, this article examines how gay men in West Germany conceived of democratisation, asking what expectations they held for the new republic, how their views shifted as it proved hostile to queer citizens, and what this history means for the broader understanding of democratisation in the postwar world.

This article analyses ‘technologies of emergency’ in colonial counterinsurgency campaigns, framed around the case of Cyprus. In the 1950s, the repeated use of the state of emergency created a continuum, connecting British colonies on three different continents in a single administrative network. Lessons learned in one location were applied in the next, causing the state of emergency to evolve into a blueprint for post-war counterinsurgency in colonial settings. We contend that the toolkit of emergency technologies was not limited to legal measures, arguing instead for a more capacious category. By examining the place of Cyprus in this network and the effect of this broader ‘toolkit’ on the ground, this article views the Cyprus Emergency as one of multiple decolonisation wars in the Cold War era. In doing so, it highlights the coloniality of the island, an aspect of Cypriot history which is often overlooked in favour of more regional frameworks.

This article examines the Exhibition of Flemish and Belgian Art, 1300 to 1900, which was hosted by the London Royal Academy in 1927. Based on materials from multiple archives, it demonstrates that this event showcased both artefacts and the internationalist policies that had led to their preservation and display. This exhibition constitutes a leading example of a new kind of political performance, which expanded after 1945 and still affects international gatherings and cultural diplomacy to this day.

In 1949, Norwegian social democratic representations of Zionism and Israel shifted from mere support to idealisation. Despite the existence of an increasingly voluminous literature on the European left and Zionism, idealisation of Israel has never previously been explained as distinct from more general support. Regarding the Norwegian case, this article argues that idealisation differed from mere support in its implicit message about the status of ‘civilisation’. Support for Zionism in 1947–8 had been founded on the notion that Europeans needed to ensure the survival of the Jews in a Jewish state in order for European civilisation itself to survive. The idealisation of Israel that emerged from 1949 implicitly argued that Israel proved the attainability of the civilisational ideal and removed from European shoulders the obligation to ensure civilisation's survival. For the Norwegian labour movement, the 1949 decision to make Norway a founding member of NATO contributed to making idealisation of Israel particularly desirable.

The article traces the origins and early developments of European fusion research in the framework of Euratom and of postwar nuclear international institutionalism, and as an episode of both the technoscientific Cold War and the interaction between big science and politics in the history of European integration. Based on original Italian, French and European Union archival sources, the article deals with four main passages of Euratom's fusion history: the Euratom treaty and Euratom's first five-year programme (1958–62); the early attempts to establish a Euratom ‒ CERN Joint Study Group for Fusion Research (1958‒9); the launching of Euratom's first fusion programme; and the contribution of Euratom's ‘fusion association contracts’ with the member states to the creation and training of a European transnational epistemic community of fusion scientists and technocrats. The Merger Treaty of 1965, the ‘crisis’ of Euratom and the prospect of British entry in the Community, as well as the ‘tokamak revolution’ of the late 1960s, would contribute to substantially redefine the European fusion programme.

This article situates civil servants’ responses to regime change in 1933 in their longer-term context. Focusing particularly on the process of ‘self-coordination’ – a term used by historians to describe and explain ministerial bureaucrats’ voluntary adaptation to changed political circumstances by implementing the Third Reich's policy agenda – it argues that this process was far from unique, being in fact the typical response to regime change throughout the twentieth century. By examining how civil servants facilitated regime change in 1918/19 and 1933 specifically, it also argues that the central pillar of the ‘self-coordination’ thesis – that it was informed by civil servants’ political or ideological beliefs – needs to be revisited. Indeed, the fact that many began their careers in Imperial Germany and served under both the Weimar Republic and National Socialism suggests that it was not only ideology that informed their actions. So, in conclusion, the essay looks at how bureaucratic organisations like government ministries function and, more importantly, how individuals function within them, presenting a different angle, based on organisational theory, from which to assess civil servants’ propensity to ‘self-coordinate’.

Population statistics reflect a nation's quality of life and accordingly have the potential to be highly politically charged, with implications for a government's legitimacy. In the Brezhnev era Soviet Union, emerging negative trends regarding life expectancy, fertility and mortality had the potential to de-legitimise the Soviet regime just at the moment when population issues were taking the spotlight through the United Nations. For this reason, population statistics were subject to significant censorship. The article examines how this censorship worked for domestic and international audiences. I show the main form of censorship was an editorial review by trusted experts in the Party and argue that the process was defined by uncertainty and negotiation, with personal networks mediating the result. In general, the period was characterised by tension between the need to expand demographic research and leaders' desire to suppress knowledge of unfortunate demographic truths.

The present article focuses on the political and social influence of the antimilitarist movement in Spain during the 1970s and 1980s. The article shows how throughout the 1970s the issue of conscientious objection became part of a wider context of struggle for the individual and collective rights and freedoms the Francoist dictatorship denied the Spanish population, achieving an important political impact by concentrating its action on Spain's external image. Throughout the following decade, the antimilitarist movement grew within a context of large-scale mobilisations and public debate around pacifism and antimilitarism, on the occasion of the referendum on Spain's permanence in NATO. The most important campaign was that of resistance both to military service and the alternative social service, the so-called insumisión.

In the period between the proclamation of royal dictatorship and the assassination of King Alexander I, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was characterised by the dynamics of competing visions of Yugoslavism. Questions concerning the identity of a Yugoslav nation-to-be, in terms of both national unity and diversity of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, were held not only in political discourse, but also through architecture and the visual culture. This article explores the ideological roles of the Bridge of King Alexander I, built between 1929 and 1934 to connect Belgrade with the ex-Habsburg town of Zemun, which carried not only heavy transport but also powerful political messages. The bridge's construction prompted a widespread public controversy, representing a vivid testimony to rivalries, tensions and discontents between different ideas about the Yugoslav nation, underpinned by both political and professional agendas.

One of the main characteristics of the Soviet domination sphere in Europe after the Second World War was the unification of political systems of the countries within the Soviet Union. This paper examines the Soviet impact on the electoral system of the People's Republic of Poland, a country often considered to have been the most unique among the Eastern European states. This article argues that although there were some important differences between the electoral codes in the USSR and communist-led Poland, the effects of the elections in both countries were the same: popular voting could not pose any threat to the power of their communist parties. This resulted from practices – similar in both countries – not included in the electoral law. This leads to the conclusion that the differences between the elections in the Soviet Union and post-war Poland were rather illusory.

Two leading political organisations in interwar Romania were genuinely anti-Semitic: the fascist Legionary movement and the far-right party the National Christian Defence League (LANC), known from 1935 as the National Christian Party (PNC). Whereas the anti-Semitism of the Legionaries is well researched, that of the LANC/PNC has rarely been studied. I argue that, in addition to an anti-Semitic agenda and rhetoric, anti-Jewish violence was an inherent part of the political practices of the LANC/PNC. I analyse the party's national congress on 8 November 1936, when thousands of supporters gathered in Bucharest, and use party correspondence and police and Interior Ministry records to show that the attendees engaged extensively in anti-Jewish violence, before and even more so after the congress. The government, ruled by the National Liberal Party, agreed to the mass anti-Semitic gathering but had only a vague plan to repress violent anti-Semitism: expecting the event to stir up anti-Jewish hatred, the Interior Ministry mobilised the security forces to prevent outbursts during the congress, but not much before or after. The LANC/PNC played a central role in the politicisation of extreme anti-Semitism in interwar Romania, and addressing the party's history provides a better understanding of the right-wing radicalisation of the time.

After the demise of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, Fiume's long political transition provided women with new challenges and opportunities. This was especially true for female public employees who had to adapt to a weak and fluid state that provided them with social security and benefits in exchange for loyalty and control. Beginning with two case studies of women elected to the Fiume city council in 1919, this paper explores how the two professional cohorts they represented – teachers and tobacco workers – learned to cope with the turbulent national and political events, as well as with the rapidly deteriorating economic conditions.

This essay focuses on West Germany as exemplary global-local intersection of the spiritual turn in the long 1960s. It shows how spirituality as practices and beliefs seeking a closer connection with the divine within or outside religious groups experienced a multifaceted renaissance in the countercultures of the long 1960s. In this spiritual quest contemporary explorations in the expansion of consciousness and the increasing interest in meditation were pivotal practices. The essay reflects the international exchange of knowledge about body-mind practices from Amazonia and Mexico to the United States, India and West Germany, showing how actors were influenced by international and national connections. Practitioners found the practices of spirituality neither in Christian contemplative traditions nor in Jewish versions, but in various forms of what seekers received and practised as Hinduism or Buddhism, etc., that gave contemporary followers and seekers a means of connecting to higher truths – to God – without God.

This article examines the Polish exhibit at the International Labour Exhibition in Turin, 1961, which presented Poland as a socialist welfare state. By locating the display within the broader historical context of Cold War competitiveness, the article intends to make two points. Firstly, using written and visual sources, this article explores how the humanistic dimension of the socialist welfare project, which remained largely unmatched by the capitalist West, was visualised and rationalised. Effectively, it proposes reading of social benefits and state subsidised services as a novel subject of cultural diplomacy. Secondly, by indicating the role of designers as significant stakeholders who actively shaped the country's self-imagining abroad, this article advances the scholarship about design diplomacy. It evidences that modern design allowed the exhibition makers to convey both symbolic and material aspects of the welfare state, which had at stake the battle for hearts and minds.