Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2025
Chapter 4 follows the trajectory of Ernst Frey and other European anti-fascists, who enlisted in the Vietnamese Army after defecting from the French Foreign Legion. It focuses on the complicated relationship between the soldiers who survived the anti-fascist struggles in Europe and the new generation of soldiers of the anti-colonial wars in the Global South. After 1945, many Spanish Civil War veterans followed events in Algeria and Indochina with great interest and sided with those fighting for national self-determination. Notwithstanding the visibility of both causes, notable armed support materialised only in Indochina, where foreign volunteers were initially well-received and saw their military influence grow much beyond what their modest careers in the French Foreign Legion might indicate. With time, however, they were also seen as a challenge to the nationalistic Vietnamese leadership, who, thanks largely to Chinese support from the early 1950s onwards, were radically altering their military structure, leaving little or no space for French Foreign Legion defectors.
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