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George Orwell: War
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To most readers, George Orwell is the author of two dimly remembered satirical fantasies that were assigned in high school. To a more politicized group, he's the independent radical who saw through Communist lies during the Spanish Civil War and became one of the 20th century's crucial voices against totalitarianism and for what Orwell himself often simply called ''common decency.'' And then there is the smaller, intense membership of the Orwell cult.
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His attempts to join the army after war's outbreak having failed because of his weak health, Orwell in early 1940 joined what later became known as the Home Guard (resigning from this part-time service in November 1943 on medical grounds). Hawkins, then in his mid-30s, was a well-known contributor to the BBC's Home Service who, according to one source, "had the reputation of being able to get good authors to the microphone," Orwell's first appearance with Hawkins had been in late 1940 on his "The Writer In The Witness Box," a tightly-scripted, heavily-censored seemingly spontaneous discussion of "The Proletarian Writer." In August 1941 Orwell joined the BBC as a Talks Assistant in the Indian Section of its Eastern Service, designed to propagandize India and Southeast Asia for the British cause. Orwell within a few months became a Talks Producer, and subsequently worked with Hawkins on various programs. The 1942 letter is ... found in the Appendix to W J. West, editor, Orwell: The War Broadcasts (London: Duckworth/British Broadcasting Corporation, 1985), pp.229-230.
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Orwell published Coming up for Air in 1939. In August 1941 Orwell began work for the Eastern Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). His main task was to write the scripts for a weekly news commentary on the Second World War. Orwell's scripts were broadcast to the people of India between the end of 1941 and early 1943. During this period Orwell ... worked for the Observer newspaper.
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After World War II began, Orwell believed that "now we are in this bloody war we have got to win it and I would like to lend a hand." The army... rejected him as physically unfit, but later he served for a period in the home guard and as a fire watcher. The Orwells moved to London in May 1940. In early 1941 he commenced writing "London Letters" for Partisan Review, and in August he joined the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as a producer in the Indian section. He remained in this position until 1943.
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Before the war, Orwell had his moments of contempt for graphic scenes of violence in fiction, particularly the American hard-boiled crime fiction available in pulp magazines. In 1936, in a review of a detective novel, he quotes a passage describing a brutal and methodical beating, which uncannily foreshadows Winston Smith's experiences inside the Ministry of Love. What has happened? Spain and the second world war, it would seem. What was "disgusting rubbish" back in a more insulated time has become, by the postwar era, part of the vernacular of political education, and by 1984 in Oceania it will be institutionalised. Yet Orwell cannot, like the average pulp writer, enjoy the luxury of unreflectively insulting the flesh and spirit of any character.
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It was fighting in the Spanish Civil war that Orwell came to really despise Communist influences. In 1936, Orwell volunteered to fight for the fledgling Spanish Republic, who at the time were fighting the Fascist forces of Gen Franco. It was a conflict that polarised nations. To the left, the war was a symbol of a real Socialist revolution, based on the principles of equality and freedom. It was for these ideals that many international volunteers, from around the world, went to Spain to fight on behalf of the Republic. Orwell found himself in the heart of the Socialist revolution in Barcelona.
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