Following the liberation, the main participants in the publication included Albert Ollivier, Jean-Paul de Dadelsen, Jean Bloch-Michel (1912–1987), and Georges Altschuler (fr).

During 1946, Combat was opposed to the "game of the parties" claiming to rebuild France, and thus became closer to Charles de Gaulle without, however, becoming the official voice of his movement.

In July 1948 (more than a year after the May 1947 crisis and the expulsion of the Communist Party (ministers) from the government), Victor Fay (de), a Marxist activist, took over Combat's direction, but he failed to stop the newspaper's evolution towards more popular subjects and less political information.

During the May 1968 crisis, Combat supported the student movement although from a Stalinist point of view, through the signatures of the likes of Jacques-Arnaud Penent (fr).

On 3 June, it published a falsified version of the Address to All Workers by the Council for Maintaining the Occupations, removing the references to the Situationist International and the attacks against the Stalinists.