The Volunteers

To scroll through all the names, click the search button without entering anything in the ‘Search here’ box

The database

Between 1996 and 2016, IBMT archivist Jim Carmody and historian Richard Baxell worked on putting together an annotated list of all the British and Irish volunteers for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939. The list drew upon a wide range of sources held in Britain, Spain and Russia, though principally those held in the International Brigade Archive in the Marx Memorial Library in London (IBA) and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History in Moscow (RGASPI).

The searchable list above gives a brief summary of each of the nearly 2,400 individuals for whom there are records. In time more information will be placed online. Hopefully, until then, this will be a useful starting point for relatives, students and researchers. This database has been placed online with generous financial support from Unite SE/6239 Branch.

If you have any comments or additional information about any of the individuals listed here, contact the IBMT by clicking this link. If you have a photo of any of the volunteers which you would like to see added to his or her entry, please send it to this same link. We are grateful to Kevin Buyers for allowing us to use several of the photos from his ‘XV International Brigade in Spain’ website, to Mick Brunton, who volunteered to load these images onto our site, and to Graham Briggs, Alan Lloyd and Stuart Walsh, who have provided additional information about individual volunteers. 

NB: The records include assessments of the volunteers made by their political superiors in the latter part of the war in Spain. Many are derogatory, referring to desertion, drunkenness and indiscipline, but should be taken with a pinch of salt. They were written for internal use, primarily as an assessment of suitability for future membership of the Communist Party at home. Many volunteers with outstanding military records in Spain – including senior ranking officers – nevertheless received extremely critical assessments.

Can't find what you're looking for?

If the name you are searching doesn’t appear on our database, there could be a number of explanations… 

1/ The records kept in Spain were not always accurate. It could be that the name you are looking for was misspelt at the time. You could therefore try alternative spellings. 

2/ The person in question may have travelled to France and Spain with the intention of joining the International Brigades but was arrested and repatriated by French police; or they were rejected by the International Brigades on medical grounds and returned home; or they changed their mind at the last minute and decided not to enlist. If you think any of these possibilities may apply, you could consult the list of some 4,000 names compiled by Special Branch, who were monitoring ferry ports for suspects travelling to Spain. The list is held at the National Archives in Kew (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk). None of these records is online, so you will have to go to Kew in person or pay to get digital copies. 

3/ The person may have used a false name in Spain. Several volunteers did so. If this is the case, you will have to use other fields for your search, or find out from other sources what the alias may have been. 

4/ The person you are looking for may have enlisted in a different battalion. Our records centre on those who served in the British Battalion. However, several British and Irish or British and Irish-born volunteers served in, for example, the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion or the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. Others fought in French and German units or even in Spanish Republican forces. To search for such individuals we recommend you consult the databases of American and Canadian volunteers (www.alba-valb.org/volunteers and https://spanishcivilwar.ca/volunteers/browse). Additionally, you can consult the database of all International Brigade volunteers being compiled by the Sidbrint research centre at Barcelona University (http://sidbrint.ub.edu/en) and the Comintern archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry (http://sovdoc.rusarchives.ru/#tematicchilds&rootId=94999). Historian Richard Baxell has produced this useful guide to navigating the Russian archives: www.richardbaxell.info/moscow-files

5/ Several Jewish volunteers used noms de guerre or were known by different names than the ones used in Spain. For more information on individual Jewish volunteers, see this list compiled by Martin Sugarman of the Association of Jewish Ex Servicemen and Women: www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-who-served-in-the-international-brigade-in-the-spanish-civil-war

Glossary of political organisations referred to in the database

Database sources The following is a key to the sources mentioned in the comments column. It should not be taken as an exhaustive bibliography of the British Battalion in Spain, nor the International Brigades themselves.