I went to a friend’s book launch last week. It was for David Goutor’s, A Chance to Fight Hitler: A Canadian Volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. It was held on 11 October 2018 at Queen Books, at 914 Queen St East, Toronto. The bookstore was new to me. It has a wide-ranging collection, from children’s books, to architecture and design titles, fiction, poetry, some history and current affairs too. It was some time before I made it around the whole store because the event was crowded with people attending the event.
The book, as in the topic and research, I am familiar with from the author. It is a biography of Hans Ibing, a relative of the author. He was a German immigrant to Canada who was involved in labour organizing and fought for Republican Spain as a volunteer in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.
The decision by publisher Between the Lines to focus the title of the book on Ibing’s soldier experience and cast him in the struggle against Hitler is understandable. It faithfully reflects Ibing’s motivations for fighting, but the book is actually more than the tale of a Spanish Civil War soldier. It looks at his life overall. It is a rare biography of an ordinary person, an historical exploration of one person’s encounter with fascism and communism in Canada and abroad, and the life he lived afterwards.
Two main points sit with me before I read the book. One is the role that Ibing’s pre-war experiences in Canada played in encouraging him to go to Spain. Michael Petrou argues in his book on Canadian Spanish Civil War volunteers, Renegades, that unemployment, the absence of social programs, and suppression of protest radicalized many of those who made up the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. He suggests that their communism was a largely a practical reaction to lived experience. Was that true for Ibing?
The second point is about the nature of Ibing’s war experience. Goutor emphasized the unusual perspective on the war offered by Ibing in his talk. Serving as a truck driver in a transport unit, Ibing travelled across all of the war’s fronts, in multiple regions of the country. His personal narrative of the war is quite unusual, I think, compared with most of the recollections of that war, which speak of local realities, whether on a front, or in a city or town. Ibing was also alone much of the time, and did not experience the comradeship of units at the front and elsewhere, though he was frequently in harm’s way, delivering material to the front and carrying away wounded. This is quite different from the types of war experience I have read about in First World War veterans sources, and seems to be an important perspective on the Spanish Civil War.
Attractively designed and with a compelling story to tell, I’m looking forward to reading A Chance to Fight Hitler.
Resources
- David Goutor, A Chance to Fight Hitler: A Canadian Volunteer in the Spanish Civil War (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2018)
- Michael Petrou, Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War (UBC Press, 2009)
- Victor Howard, “Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 2006, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mackenzie-papineau-battalion, accessed 14 October 2018
- Queen Books, http://queenbooks.ca/
- Between the Lines, https://btlbooks.com/
Citation
Nathan Smith, “A Chance to Fight Hitler,” 14 October 2018, HIS241.com, http://www.his241.com/?p=574
