Rating: 
Summary: It's political philosophy AND man to man combat!
Review: "The danger was quite simple and intelligible. It was the antagonism between those who wished the revolution to go forward and those who wished to check or prevent it - ultimately, between Anarchists and Communists.... Given this alignment of forces there was bound to be trouble." Such is Orwell's succinct analysis of the problems facing those who would resist Franco's right wing coup in Spain in 1936.
Opposed to the Franco-led Fascists (supported by Germany and Italy) was the Popular Front, "in essential an alliance of enemies". Further complicating the mix was the emerging fact that in Spain, "on the Government [ie, anti-fascist] side the Communists stood not upon the extreme Left, but upon the extreme Right. " Orwell justifies this counter-intuitive claim with a detailed discussion, summarized by noting that the International Communist movement at this time had forsaken the goal of world revolution to chase the chimera of the completion of a revolution in the USSR. This Stalinist position (including alliances with capitalist democracies at the expense of workers and unions) caused Trotsky and others to seek other venues. Recently, the formerly Maoist (nee 'Trotskyite') rulers of China similarly shifted from totalitarian extreme left to authoritarian right (socialist ideals sacrificed to entrepreneurial capitalism, without significant political liberty.) [cf China Wakes -The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power - Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn]
The Communists focused on winning the war no matter what --without collectivization that would alienate the peasants, or worker control of industry that would push the middle classes into Franco's arms. Their stated goal was parliamentary democracy, with strong central government, and a fully militarized government under central, unified command. The POUM position was that such talk was just another name for capitalism, and ultimately the same as fascism. Their alternative was worker control, with workers militias and police forces "If the workers do not control the armed forces, the armed forces will control the workers". The Anarchists (actually a multitude of parties) had comprised in even considering this alliance, but insisted on direct `control over industry by workers, "government by local committees and resistance to all forms of centralized authoritarianism" Orwell's summary of this bewildering political situation is "Communist emphasis is always on centralism and efficiency, the Anarchist's on liberty and equality". Combining forces seemed like a reasonable solution for the duration, "But in the early period, when the revolutionary parties seemed to have the game in their hands, this was impossible. Between the Anarchists and the Socialists there were ancient jealousies, the POUM, as Marxists, were sceptical of Anarchism, while from the pure Anarchist standpoint, the 'Trotskyism' of the POUM was not much preferable to the 'Stalinism' of the Communists."
One example of how these rivalries frustrated an effective opposition to the Fascists:
".. the Russian arms were supplied via the Communist Party, and the parties allied to them, who saw to it that as few as possible got to their political opponents. ...by proclaiming a non-revolutionary policy the Communists were able to gather in all those whom the extremists h ad scared. It was easy, for instance, to rally the wealthier peasants against the collectivization policy of the Anarchists. ... The war was essentially a triangular struggle. The fight against Franco had to continue, but the simultaneous aim of the Government was to recover such power as remained in the hands of the trade unions. It was done by .. a policy of pin pricks...There was no general and obvious counterrevolutionary move.. The workers could always be brought to heel by an argument that is almost too obvious to need stating: 'Unless you do this, that and the other we shall lose the war'." Modern parallels, from the arguments made during the cold war to modern appeals by the Democratic party to its leftward elements and other progressives-- 'work with us or get something worse'. Or, in his descriptions of the Communist crack down on the other Leftist factions after the 1937 Barcelona street fighting, a comparison of the broad and unchecked abuses of a police force which has no worries about habeas corpus -- why worry about producing evidence at a trial when it can merely arrest or 'disappear' opponents without any legal representation or outside communication.
But this book is also a very personal one, written less than a year after these events took place, Orwell paints indelible images of life in the muddy trenches, and even the moment when he is shot in the throat:
"Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt a tremendous shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shrivelled up to nothing. The sand-bags in front of me receded into the immense distance... I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang, which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense."
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing look at the experience of war...
Review: In addition to being a book about the experience of an infantry man in the Spanish Civil War, this is also a book about the nature of politics and political parties. Orwell doesn't hold anything back when he discusses his disgust at the Fascist party of Franco, as well as the fabricated lies of the Communist press, and the ignorance of the French and English media. His political analysis is quite intriguing in that it provides the reader with an historical context in which to examine the key players who would be involved in another conflict only a couple years later. The Spanish Civil War serves as an exciting background to the Second World War which is right around the corner.
This is a vivid account of the life of a soldier. Orwell doesn't over dramatize situations; rather he tends to maintain a realistic style throughout this work. In addition, Orwell successfully intertwines humor with suspense as he recounts his brushes with death. In this book, Orwell examines the moral and physical experience of a man at war. His literary style resembles that of Remarque in his book All Quiet on the Western Front. Writing an engaging account from the first person point of view makes the account more authentic.
Rating:
Summary: Honor and Radical Politics at High Stakes
Review: The best way that I can think of to describe George Orwell is a skeptical and responsible idealist, obsessed with the nature of, uses and abuses of power. Generally unacknowledged about Orwell was the fact that he was a committed socialist and a man who believed that human beings were capable of creating a society where a brotherhood of man based on social justice could exist. In 1936 he went to Spain and saw in Catalonia, and more specifically Barcelona, and felt that he was witness to a society that existed on that basis-in his own words, he "recognized it as a state of affairs worth fighting for." Over the next several months, while he fought for the Spanish republic side by side with workers in the militia of the radical POUM, he saw it destroyed and libeled by the republic he came to defend and, more specifically, the Spanish Communist Party and its lackeys throughout the world. His story is exactly what the title proclaims it to be: homage to the men and women who had fought, very literally for freedom and social justice, and the society that existed on those principles that he saw destroyed. Like any good journalist as well, he wants to set the record straight about a very misunderstood state of affairs. Part soldiering memoir, with what seems to be the obligatory British emphasis on the surreality and physical deprivation of the trenches, and part recitation of the little known suppression of anarchists and radical socialists in the midst of the general war against Franco, Orwell is able to show the spirit that animated the thousands of foreign volunteers that went to fight for the republic, and how they were all betrayed. The nature of the betrayal was made even worse by the fact that it was committed in a libelous fashion that did not allow most to even know that it had occurred. Orwell did not go to Spain looking to expose anyone on the republican side of the war as a villain, but by the time he left in July of 1937, he knew with a good amount of certainty that the Soviet Union was as great an enemy of democracy as any fascist could be-a very foreign idea in left-wing thought at the time. Through the cataloging of his own experiences in Barcelona during the suppression of the POUM and anarchists in early 1937 and comparing them with the accounts of left-wing and Communist newspapers from in and outside of Great Britain, Orwell concluded that a massive campaign of disinformation concerning the suppression of anti-Communist radicals in Catalonia. Disturbing enough was the fact that it was happening and that Communists were lying about it. Orwell knew that the Communist Party press had a tendency to lie, but what was much more disturbing was how the more mainstream liberal and left opinion makers were accepting hook, line and sinker the stories of the perfidy of anti-Communists that were coming exclusively from Communists and their allies. He saw an inexcusable mixture of gullibility and laziness animating the reportage of the war there. The disinformation that he records was terrible enough, but this was not where the true horror and betrayal laid. Hundreds of defenders of the republic, including foreigners that Orwell knew personally had sacrificed much to fight there, were being thrown in jail and the government of Spain was utterly powerless to stop it. Orwell shows something of a Communist state within a state that operated outside the power of the government. He concludes that it was because the Spanish republic had to depend on the Soviet government for its military support. This lamentable situation is the fault not of the republican government, men of goodwill and honestly mostly, but by the fact that no countries other than the Soviet Union, and to a small degree Mexico, were helping the republic in the fight for its life. The confrontation against Franco's fascism was being undermined because the powers that were running the war were declaring the most militant of the antifascists to be de facto traitors. If there were ever an abuse of power, coupled with a colossal abuse of the truth, the suppression of the POUM and its allies was it. As an historical document, "Homage to Catalonia" is a necessary to any understanding of the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War. The villainous and parasitical treatment of the Spanish Republic by the Soviet Union that has recently come to light was dimly perceived decades by Orwell decades before the documentation proving Soviet perfidy came out of Russian archives. It is also necessary reading to gain a deeper understanding of Orwell's masterwork "1984." If there any wonder as to how he could so vividly imagine a totalitarian society without ever having lived in one, it becomes clear that he had some help from the utterly preposterous situation he found himself in during the suppression of the POUM and anarchists in Catalonia. Finally, the level of honesty and sincerity with which he tells his story is total and completely without pretension and propaganda. Orwell was loyal to truth and basic goodness-values that are still in short supply today.
Rating:
Summary: A front line experience
Review: I wouldn't call it definitive, but Homage to Catalonia is a very engaging account of the Spanish Civil War. Orwell wanted an infantry man's experience, drawn to the first person accounts of WWI by such authors as Remarque. As a result, Orwell gives the reader an intimate view of the action, or rather inaction of the front line. More compelling is his description of the street fighting which broke out in Barcelona, and the split that developed in the Socialist government, making it vulnerable to attack. Orwell castigated Britain and France for not coming to the aid of the Socialist government, allowing Franco to gain the upper hand as the result of aid from Germany and Italy. Orwell also underwent a catharsis in this book, losing his respect for the Communists, as a result of Stalin's notorious policies. In the end, Orwell seemed angry at pretty much everyone for allowing Spain to fall into Fascist hands. He maintained his respect for the anarchists, particularly the ex-pats who fought for the anarchists in the civil war. But, Orwell seemed to realize it was a losing battle. The anarchists were torn among themselves as they struggled for the heart and soul of the Spanish people. Orwell never got to Madrid, unlike Borkenau and Hemingway, so his account is limited to the fighting which occurred in Catalonia.
Rating:
Summary: Orwell had a more interesting life then assumed!
Review: I have not read any of Orwell's books, besides Homage To Catalonia. It's a great book, often funny, often not. I have never read a single thing on this war, i've heard of it. It's never came up in any of my classes, probably because of it's anarchist-communist fighting facism. Well, check this book out.
Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous Read
Review: I picked up Homage to Catalonia on a whim. I am glad I did. Orwell writes in magnificent prose his experiences as an idealistic young man taking up arms to fight the spread of fascism. It concludes with a disillusioned, near mortally wounded (but still idealistic) Orwell fleeing the country for his life - a wanted criminal in the land he fought and bled to save. While he spent only a few months in Spain, but his vivid descriptions of the personalities he met, the hardship he endured and the near-fatal gunshot wound he received clearly impacted him in a profound way. His account will similarly impact the reader. Homage to Catalonia is really two books - one is the graphic retelling of Orwell's daily existence with the POUM (a Marxist group of revolutionaries), his impressions of his fellow militia-men, the privations they suffered, and the combat that they hardly ever saw. The other is Orwell's first-hand account of the politics "behind the scenes"; the Machiavellian plotting and schemeing between various revolutionary groups, the half-truths (and outright fabrications) of the media, the jockeying of politicians and nations in what would become the "dress rehearsal" for the Second World War. Much to my amusement, Orwell realizes he is writing two books, and point-blank invites the reader to "skip" the political analysis and get to the "good stuff" if the reader so wishes. In either case, Orwell wrote a tragedy. A tragedy that Spain had to suffer as it did. And that such noble ideas (as those Orwell himself fought for) were eventually washed away with Great Power "realpolitik." The book was written while the civil war was still playing itself out; I beleive Orwell saw the writing on the wall. Highly recommeded reading.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful on Stalinist foreign policy, Spanish Civil War
Review: I actually wrote this an extra credit book report:
A Homage to Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is an account of Orwell's personal story of his experience in the Spanish Civil War and some reflections on the complex political situations involved. He wrote it in 1938 (I think so; the introduction didn't bother to mention when it was actually written as its author was obviously not a historian), only months after his experience. The reader is put the exciting situation of Europe before World War II. The fact he was writing about contemporary subjects makes it all the more interesting, because he did not have the advantage of knowing what was going to happen next making his opinions of what should be done more valid.
I started reading the book thinking it was going to be about Orwell's disillusionment with Stalinist Russia. If he ever did admire the USSR, he does not admit to it. He does however admit to only joining the POUM because that was the first group he found, though I do not believe he would have ever joined what he referred to as a right-wing Socialist group (though he was tempted at one point, as it was the only way to get to Madrid). It is certain he was disillusioned by several other things. The degree to which USSR-backed groups were not revolutionary, but only wished to perpetuate the "bourgeoisie democracy" I think did surprise them. He thought that this antirevolutionary policy may have been detrimental to anti-Franco cause, because, for example, it meant the Moors of Morocco could not be effectively allied with. This policy was similar to the USSR insisting the Chinese Communists allied with the moderates long after this made sense, though there they had the excuse that unindustrialized China was not ready for a revolution. One thing Orwell was certainly disillusioned about was journalism, due to the coverage of the Spanish Civil War and its disparity with what he was witnessing. On both sides he found simplifications and outright lies.
Orwell obviously cannot be fully objective about the topic. However, he is a journalist and does try. Orwell sums up this possibly downfall fairly well in saying "... beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events." His politics can be described as Marxist. He thought that a revolution was the only way to help the proletariat; it could not happen within the constraints of democracy. Outside of some the political commentary, the book is in fact a primary document and in this respect it is good to read regardless of his subjectivity, as his opinions are valuable in their own right.
I traveled to Spain a few years ago and found I agreed with his reflections on Spanish culture. He pointed out from time to time things in "typical Spanish fashion." Orwell noted how laid-back the Spanish are, the word incompetent could almost be used. For instance, it was often a hassle to pay the bill at a restaurant. It is like they did not want our money. I had attributed this as a reaction to Fascism, though it apparently predated it. In one of his few optimistic statements, he predicted Fascism would not be as bad as in Italy and Germany because of the inefficiency of the Spanish culture; they would just not be able to pull it off. From the little I know of the following decades, this was more or less bore out.
Homage to Catalonia remains an excellent read to anyone interested into this facet of the Spanish Civil War or Stalinist foreign policy in general. It gives a first person account of the soldier's view of the war; I think a fairly average one. Most accounts of war seem to be by people who take down their story because something unique happened to them. Orwell was probably planning to write a book regardless. So Orwell complains much more about boredom then he does carnage, as he was stationed where both he and the Fascists did not have enough firepower to go on the offensive.
Rating:
Summary: The Standard for War Autobiographies
Review: Written with passion, verve and brilliance, this is Orwell's personal history of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War. A liberal leftist in the old sense of the words, his dedication to political liberty compelled him to put his life on the line for the ideals he held dear. And a harrowing experience it was. Orwell shows how the forces of the Republic were themselves split along idealogical lines and eventually became totalitarian as the war progressed. The atrocities on both sides, the deeply felt values of his anarchists and the political intrigues of an increasingly crumbling republic are all highlighted. Read Orwell. Read this, his essays and his novels, not just the popular 1984 or Animal Farm. His one one of the great voices of the early-mid twentieth century. A contrarian, a liberal leftest and an anti-totalitarian. Homage to Catalonia is one of the most gripping tales of the twentieth century by one of it's most shining minds.
Rating:
Summary: REALPOLITIK NIGHTMANRES
Review: Picture a man in a twilight zone: He has left that uncomfortable and boring, at times deadly experience known as static trench warfare after a sniper's bullet has missed his jugular by a millimeter, and wound up on the run from the local authorities who were now chasing him as a terrorist suspect. Along the way he encounters newspapers which distort the truth and publish outright lies, thus rewriting history, he has to dodge and deceive local police who arrest people against their superiors' wishes and cart them off to secret jails to be eventually shot, and he has to keep his military identity and what unit he belongs to a secret, while keeping his military documents on his person to avoid getting arrested as a deserter. ... this first hand true account was written by a man, who would go on to become a British propagandist during the World War Two and who would lend his name to totalitarian omnipotence, the man is none other than George Orwell.
Rating:
Summary: Classic
Review: George Orwell is now remembered for two works Animal Farm and 1984. As these books are parodies of Stalinist Russia one would imagine over time that he will gradually sink into obscurity. This book is an earlier work and tells of his experience as a volunteer during the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was a volunteer with the forces organized by POUM. The early part of the book tells of his experiences at the front line. As a memoir it is remarkable honest and readable. The Spanish Civil War was one of the early experiences of Communism seizing a nationalist movement and diverting it for their own purposes. Orwell was horrified at this occurring and a good deal of the book deals with the politics of the situation. He describes how a popular movement with some chance of winning was hijacked by Stalin's cronies and ended up being defeated. It is no surprise that he ended up being one of the most articulate and effective critics of Stalinism. This book is readable and a fascinating picture of a pivotal time in history.
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