Plot outline
A fascist organization with roots in the Spanish Civil War, The Black Order Brigade, commits an act of terror in a small Aragonese village. All villagers are executed. The English journalist Pritchard, who once fought against the rebel faction during the civil war, decides to take revenge. He succeeds in assembling nine of his former comrades from the 15th International Brigade. One of them is now working for the Mossad in Tel-Aviv, another one is a rich screenwriter in Hollywood, another is a former member of the French Resistance. There's an Italian judge, a famous Polish writer, a Philosophy teacher in Germany and a priest in Spain, among others. They all meet again after so many years; they are old, sick and weak, but full of passions and memories of the past.
The chase starts in Spain, where the local contact is killed in a bomb attack (attributed to the infamous Brigade). The group then travels around Europe trying to locate the fascist paramilitary old-timer gang. A small group of elderly people hunts another group of people at the same age, and it unravels a showdown with the past and the present.
The International Brigades were soldiers set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organization existed for two years, from 1936 until 1938. It is estimated that during the entire war, between 40,000 and 59,000 members served in the International Brigades, including some 10,000 who died in combat. Beyond the Spanish Civil War, "International Brigades" is also sometimes used interchangeably with the term foreign legion in reference to military units comprising foreigners who volunteer to fight in the military of another state, often in times of war.
The Italian Social Republic, known prior to December 1943 as the National Republican State of Italy, but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò, was a Nazi-German puppet state with limited diplomatic recognition that was created during the latter part of World War II. It existed from the beginning of the German occupation of Italy in September 1943 until the surrender of German troops in Italy in May 1945. The German occupation triggered widespread national resistance against it and the Italian Social Republic, leading to the Italian Civil War.
The Corps of Volunteer Troops was a Fascist Italian expeditionary force of military volunteers, which was sent to Spain to support the Nationalist forces under General Francisco Franco against the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–39.
Samuel George Montague Nathan was an English soldier who served in the British Army during World War I, the Royal Irish Constabulary's Auxiliary Division during the Anglo-Irish War and the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. During his service in the Auxiliary Division, Nathan was suspected of being involved in the assassination of two Sinn Féin politicians, which later contributed to the alienation of Irish volunteers in the International Brigades from their British counterparts during the Spanish Civil War.
The Italian Resistance consisted of all the Italian resistance groups who fought the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborationists of the Italian Social Republic during the Second World War in Italy from 1943 to 1945. As a diverse anti-fascist and anti-nazist movement and organisation, the Resistenza opposed Nazi Germany and its Fascist puppet state regime, the Italian Social Republic, which the Germans created following the Nazi German invasion and military occupation of Italy by the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS from 8 September 1943 until 25 April 1945.
Land and Freedom is a 1995 film directed by Ken Loach and written by Jim Allen. The film narrates the story of David Carr, an unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who decides to fight in the Spanish Civil War for the republicans, a coalition of Socialists, Communists and Anarchists against a nationalist coup d'état. The film won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. The film was also nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
The Irish Brigade fought on the Nationalist side of Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The unit was formed wholly of Roman Catholics by the politician Eoin O'Duffy, who had previously organised the banned quasi-fascist Blueshirts and openly fascist Greenshirts in Ireland. Despite the declaration by the Irish government that participation in the war was unwelcome and ill-advised, 700 of O'Duffy's followers went to Spain. They saw their primary role in Spain as fighting for the Roman Catholic Church against the Red Terror of Spanish anticlericalists. They also saw many religious and historical parallels in the two nations, and hoped to prevent communism gaining ground in Spain.
The Connolly Column was the name given to a group of Irish republican socialist volunteers who fought for the Second Spanish Republic in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. They were named after James Connolly, the executed leader of the Irish Citizen Army. They were a company-strength unit of the XV International Brigade, which also included the US, British and Latin American battalions in Spain. The name is now retroactively applied to all Irish volunteers who fought for the Spanish Republic.
The Italian Civil War was a civil war in the Kingdom of Italy fought during the Italian campaign of World War II between Italian fascists and Italian partisans and, to a lesser extent, the Italian Co-belligerent Army.
Joseph Wallace "Jock" Cunningham was a British volunteer in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. He became a battalion and brigade commander and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He played a key role in the Battle of Jarama, one of the principal military actions of the Spanish Civil War.
Le Vernet Internment Camp, or Camp Vernet, was a concentration camp in Le Vernet, Ariège, near Pamiers, in the French Pyrenees. It was built in 1918 as a barracks, but after World War I it was used as an internment camp for prisoners of war. From February 1939 to June 1944, it was used:
The Spanish Civil War was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties, some of which had opposed the government in the pre-war period. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as class struggle, a religious struggle, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism. According to Claude Bowers, U.S. ambassador to Spain during the war, it was the "dress rehearsal" for World War II. The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.
Randolfo Pacciardi was an Italian politician.
The Nationalist faction or Rebel faction was a major faction in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939. It was composed of a variety of right-leaning political groups that supported the Spanish Coup of July 1936 against the Second Spanish Republic and Republican faction and sought to depose Manuel Azaña, including the Falange, the CEDA, and two rival monarchist claimants: the Alfonsist Renovación Española and the Carlist Traditionalist Communion. In 1937, all the groups were merged into the FET y de las JONS. After the death of the faction's early leaders, General Francisco Franco, one of the members of the 1936 coup, headed the Nationalists throughout most of the war, and emerged as the dictator of Spain until his death in 1975.
The Republican faction, also known as the Loyalist faction or the Government faction, was the side in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939 that supported the government of the Second Spanish Republic against the Nationalist faction of the military rebellion. The name Republicans was mainly used by its members and supporters, while its opponents used the term Rojos (Reds) to refer to this faction due to its left-leaning ideology, including far-left communist and anarchist groups, and the support it received from the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the war, the Republicans outnumbered the Nationalists by ten-to-one, but by January 1937 that advantage had dropped to four-to-one.
The Spanish Republican Army was the main branch of the Armed Forces of the Second Spanish Republic between 1931 and 1939.
The Voluntary Militia for National Security, commonly called the Blackshirts or squadristi, was originally the paramilitary wing of the National Fascist Party, known as the Squadrismo, and after 1923 an all-volunteer militia of the Kingdom of Italy under Fascist rule, similar to the SA. Its members were distinguished by their black uniforms and their loyalty to Benito Mussolini, the Duce (leader) of Fascism, to whom they swore an oath. The founders of the paramilitary groups were nationalist intellectuals, former army officers and young landowners opposing peasants' and country labourers' unions. Their methods became harsher as Mussolini's power grew, and they used violence and intimidation against Mussolini's opponents. In 1943, following the fall of the Fascist regime, the MVSN was integrated into the Royal Italian Army and disbanded.
Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II and dozens of resistance movements worldwide. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding many different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as well as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.
The confederal militias were a movement of people's militia organized during the Spanish Civil War by the dominant organizations of anarchism in Spain: the National Confederation of Labor (CNT) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI).
Liesel Carritt was a German teacher, translator, refugee, and later a communist revolutionary who fought against fascism alongside the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. As a teenager, Liesel and her German-Jewish family fled the Nazis and came to Oxford, England, where local people rescued them by providing them with the necessary financial security to ensure that the British government would not deport them back into the hands of the Nazis. Her father was the former senior editor of Weimar Germany's main liberal newspaper, the Frankfurter Zeitung.
