In the 1920s and 30s, Orwell dragged himself into the impoverished classes of France and England by taking up menial jobs and posing as a tramp, efforts that led to his autobiographical Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).
His supreme commitment, however, was probably made in 1937, when he joined the Republican forces to oppose fascism in the Spanish Civil War. These experiences, which nearly included his death, led to the stunning memoir Homage to Catalonia (1938).
Outbreak of the War
As the Spanish Civil War broke out on July 19, 1936, Orwell was completing The Road to Wigan Pier at his dim cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire, which he shared with his recently-married wife Eileen.
The war began when fascist armies under General Francisco Franco launched a coup against Spain’s democratically-elected government. Franco’s revolt succeeded in taking over one-third of the country, with the government still holding Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona, and Valencia.
Orwell understood that Spain’s war was a ‘testing ground’ for political movements that would shape World War II. A dedicated socialist who hated totalitarianism, Orwell became frustrated by the Allied countries’ lack of interest in Spain.
Nazi Germany and Italy saw their chance to promote fascism, supplying weapons, materials, and advisors to Franco’s armies, while the government side, or Republicans, received only modest support from the Soviet Union and no support at all from the governments of Britain, France, or the United States.
Besides this substantial backing from fascist regimes, Franco had support from the national military, Spanish landowners, and the Catholic Church. The Republican forces were backed only by various working class parties, including communists, socialists, anarchists, and syndicalists.
Orwell, who was quoted by New English Weekly editor Philip Mairet as saying ‘This fascism, somebody’s got to stop it,’ decided to become one of 3,000 Britons who took up arms in the conflict. Explaining to his family and acquaintances that he was traveling to Spain as a journalist, Orwell had already made up his mind about becoming a soldier.
He first applied for enlistment through the British Communist Party, but was rejected for publishing criticism of the British left wing in The Road to Wigan Pier. Instead, he was accepted by the Independent Labour Party (ILP), an organization that had faded into obscurity after four decades of partnership with the British Labour Party.
Joining the Ranks
Orwell was assigned to a militia of the Unified Marxist Workers’ Party (POUM), with whom the ILP was affiliated. The Englishman, who had already served as a police officer in Burma, was assigned to the Aragón front, a northeastern desert area where he led twelve men as a corporal.
As Orwell related in Homage to Catalonia and his many essays, the POUM was a fringe anarchist group whose members were inexperienced, poorly trained, and badly equipped. Most of the soldiers, for instance, carried German Mausers that had become obsolete some twenty years before and they wore no standard uniforms.
Orwell, who didn’t know the POUM’s exact platform when he entered the war, found Soviet support nonexistent and it was not until the war’s later stages that he discovered its ill repute in Moscow.
Troubles on the Front
Affairs began to unravel on May 3, 1937, while Orwell was on leave in Barcelona. The Civil Guards, a force headed by Soviet-backed communists, opened fire on the city’s telephone building after the Confederación Nacional de Trabajo (CNT), a union allied with the POUM, refused to give it up.
This chaos severely damaged morale in the Republican forces. Orwell was pulled into the citywide fighting, spending three days on the roof of a cinema until order was restored. On May 20th, now a lieutenant, Orwell was reassigned to the Huesca front and miraculously survived a bullet through his neck.
While Orwell - in pain and unable to speak - recuperated near Barcelona, the Soviet police began arresting ‘dissidents’ of the Communist Party, including all members of the POUM. The POUM had been denounced by Moscow as Trotskyist and a threat to Soviet intervention in Europe, despite the fact that Trotsky had already criticized the party.
On June 18th, Spanish communists entered the hotel room of Eileen Blair, who was working in Barcelona as a clerical worker for the ILP. Several of Orwell’s papers were confiscated, but the most incriminating stayed hidden under a mattress.Orwell, who was in no shape to continue fighting, had gotten word of the arrests and knew that he and his wife would have to escape Spain in order to avoid prosecution. He obtained his discharge papers and a visa from the British consulate, entering France with Eileen on June 23rd.
Orwell, along with other supporters of the Republican cause, were disillusioned and later read of Spain falling entirely into fascist hands after Soviet Communism had turned against the very soldiers they needed. As Stephen Spender noted, Communism became the intelligentsia’s ‘God that failed.'
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