Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies

Steven O’Connor is Lecturer in British History and Institutions at Sorbonne University, Paris, France. His research focuses on coalition warfare, 1914-1945, the integration of non-British soldiers in the British army and Irish military history. He previously published Irish Officers in the British Forces, 1922-45 (2014). Guillaume Piketty is Full Professor in History at Sciences Po, Paris, France. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of World War II in France and Europe, and, more broadly, on war, resistance, coming out of war and society since the beginning of the US Civil War.

Introduction – Foreign fighters and multinational armies: from civil conflicts to coalition wars, 1848–2015 PART I: The impact of foreign soldiers and foreign fighters over the Longue Durée 1. Foreign military labour in Europe’s transition to modernity 2. Workers of the world, unite! Communist foreign fighters 1917–91 3. Foreign fighters and war volunteers: between myth and reality PART II: The motivations and experiences of foreign fighters 4. Why they fought: the initial motivations of German American soldiers who fought for the Union in the American Civil War 5. ‘Me among the Turks?’: Western commanders in the Late Ottoman Army and their self-narratives 6. ‘The recognized adjunct of modern armies’: foreign volunteerism and the South African War 7. Fear and Loathing in Spain. Dutch Foreign Fighters in the Spanish Civil War PART III: The nature of coalition warfare during the Second World War 8. ‘Not on a purely nationalistic basis’: the internationalism of Allied coalition warfare in the Second World War 9. The Free French and British forces in the Desert War, 1942: the learning curve in interallied military cooperation 10. The Palestinian triangle: Czechoslovaks, Jews and the British Crown in the Middle East, 1940–1943