The flowers wither quickly and, for the volunteers of the brigades, a new tragedy begins.
In France, as soon as the border is crossed, foreigners are interned in camps, at Vernet, at Gurs, at Argelès-sur-Mer, etc., under the surveillance of mobile guards and Senegalese. The conditions there are very harsh for these men, most of whom cannot return to their homeland. When the war came, some were delivered to the Germans by the Vichy government. Others will succeed in returning to their country - notably the Yugoslavs, who will form the cadres of Tito's maquis. Still others will join the French Resistance. Those who were interned in North Africa would later join the Leclerc division in large numbers. serve in a foreign army. On their return, reserve officers saw themselves broken and taken to court.
The fate of the former members of the brigades who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union would not be more enviable. Among the Soviets, several will fall, victims of the Stalinist purges. The friendly association they formed will even end up being dissolved. A notable exception is that of General Malinovsky, who would become Marshal, then Minister of Defense of the U.S.S.R.
After the Second World War, in the popular democracies, some former brigade members held important government posts. But Stalin will always be wary of these men, in his eyes "contaminated" by the broth of political culture that was Spain during the civil war. In the 1950s, we see in the dock of the great trials of Prague and Budapest many survivors of the brigades:Laszlo Rajk, Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, who will confess to being a traitor since the age of thirteen and will not be rehabilitated only post mortem; Artur London, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, who will get away with years in prison and will tell, in the Confession, how his confessions were imposed on him. East Germany is an exception in this respect:there are still relatively many former brigades in command positions. Not only have no lawsuits been brought against them, but they are honored.
André Marty, the organizer of the brigades, was expelled in 1953 from the French Communist Party, which had long been treated as a hero.
Liberal Britain did not inflict any vexation on those of its fellow citizens who had fought in the brigades.
It This was not the case in the United States, where the elders of Spain were persecuted at the time of the "witch hunt".
The luckiest were those who took refuge in Mexico:they were very well treated there.
35,000 foreigners from 54 nations had joined the brigades. More than 6,000 fell in battle.