Londons Falling

great book

Rating: 5/5
Comments:
this is an excellent first hand account of what it was like to fight in the spanish civil war, and the political situation of the time.

Come the revolution and out the revolutionary

Rating: 4/5
Comments:
George Orwell traveled to Spain in 1936 as a journalist. However, his political views and sympathy for the Spanish Rebublic's struggle against fascism in the guise of General Franco led him to enlist in the militia of the Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (Party of Marxist Unification) or P.O.U.M. While his own political views were communist, his connections in Spain came via an English group called the I.L.P. which had ties with the P.O.U.M. and he concluded that he would first enlist and then later transfer to a unit more closely affiliated with the Communists. Ultimately, his wound and the changing political climate in Republican Spain would compel Orwell to end his service in Spain and literally flee that country after less than one year. Based upon that experience, he has some interesting observations to offer on the various armed forces serving the Republic - as well as the nationalists. He served both in the ranks and as a squad/platoon leader in the frontlines. Although he speaks of "trench warfare" he also makes it clear that his frontlines were not the continuous trench lines of World War I but more chains of hilltop outposts separated from both friends and enemies by the steep ravines that cut through this hilly terrain. Thus, his frontline experience was more a matter of long hours of bored watchfulness punctiated by raids back and forth across 'no-man's land' and some longrange sniping (his wound the result of such an incident).

The resulting experience offers some interesting insights into the Civil War in Catalonia. His service in Spain ended in the wake of the Spanish Republic's supression and arrest of the P.O.U.M. militia and its supporting party as the growing communist influence in Madrid resulted in demands for the elimination of their rivals in the anarchist P.O.U.M. and its militia. In Barcelona in May 1937, Orwell had a front row seat for the Barcelona uprising that became the justification for this suppression and is able to rebut convincingly the communists' description of that event in the propaganda defending the elimation of the P.O.U.M. Force to flee while still seeking treatment for his serious wound at the hand of a fascist sniper, Orwell's experiences colored forever his perceptions of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement as reflected in many of his subsequent works. He wrote "Homage to Catalonia" and saw it published in 1938, before the end of the Civil War in Spain and this 1952 reprinting has the advantage of his own subsequently added footnotes where he noted errors he had made in his original account and how subsequent events related to or reflected upon the story told here. In this book, George Orwell offers an interesting and informative tale of men at war, of how the war in Spain looked to the men in the 'trenches,' and how his political views were forever shaped by the incidents of this conflict. This is a must read for anyone seeking a better understanding of the civil war in Spain or of George Orwell the man and his body of work.