Kiwi Compañeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War

I have had this book a while, bought (cheaply) as I had no real understanding of the Spanish Civil War, and how New Zealanders were involved. I was aware of Orwell (as a soldier) and Hemingway (as a war correspondent), but not of any New Zealand involvement.

This book is split into distinct parts. First is a relatively succinct overview of the Spanish Civil War - which I fully appreciated, and admit I wouldn't have understood much of the following biographies without. There was then a section on New Zealand Combatants, and a section on New Zealand Non-combatants. For each there was a biography -sometimes, when little was known this was only a page, other times it runs to several pages.

It is worth mentioning here that the book is quite liberal in its application of “New Zealanders”. As a Commonwealth country, still fresh from under the wing of Britain, some of the men and women were British with ties to NZ, some were born in NZ but spent their lives in Britain, and at the end of each section are some men and women who emigrated to NZ after the war.

As is always the case in books such as these, there are always incredible stories of bravery (combatants and non-combatants), there are people who deserve much more recognition that they get. There are a real range of people involved, who involve themselves for an array of reasons, from adventure seekers, mercenaries (well more motivated by money that politics), those who felt fascism was the greatest risk to the world and sought to fight against it, and those who felt solidarity with the Spanish. The thing I had not appreciated was how strong the Communist Party and support for them was, and how much of a role they played across the world at this time, and their opposition to fascism.

The civil war overview and the combatant and non-combatant biographies took around 2/3 of the book. What followed were two sections on The Domestic Response and Unearthing the Past. The first of these I found very hard going. With only a basic understanding of the politics of the time, I skimmed the majority of this.
The appendices contained a succinct table of the New Zealanders involved, a glossary, the footnotes, contributor biographies and an index.

For me the first 2/3 of the book were excellent, the second third was too academic. Realise that this is my view, reading this for non-academic reasons, so YMMV.

It is sad to think, although they are all passed away now, that many of the soldiers were not welcome at RSAs in New Zealand, and didn't get the recognition for their actions in this war, as it was not deemed as worthy as other wars. Until 2011, there was no memorial for those New Zealanders involved in the Spanish Civil War - installed on the Wellington waterfront.

This is an important book, as in many cases the few details about the people involved have been collected for the first time from family members and personal diaries, and recently (at the time of publication) released military documents (from across the world).

4 stars