This book review was written by Eugene Kernes
“In outward appearance it was a town
in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and
foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class
clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not
understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognised it
immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I believed that things were as they
appeared, that this was really a workers’ State and that the entire bourgeoisie
had either fled, been killed, or voluntarily come over to the workers’ side; I
did not realise that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying
low and disguising themselves as proletarians for the time being.” – George
Orwell, Chapter 1, Page 5
“In trench warfare five things are important: firewood,
food, tobacco, candles and the enemy. In
winter on the Saragossa front they were important in that order, with the enemy
a bad last. Except at night, when a
surprise-attack was always conceivable, nobody bothered about the enemy. They were simply remote black insects whom
one occasionally saw hopping to and fro.
The real preoccupation of both armies was trying to keep warm.” – George
Orwell, Chapter 3, Page 19
“What the devil was happening, who was fighting whom and who was winning, was at first very difficult to discover. The people of Barcelona are so used to street-fighting and so familiar with the local geography that they know by a kind of instinct which political party will hold which streets and which buildings. A foreigner is at a hopeless disadvantage.” – George Orwell, Chapter 9, Page 85
Is This An Overview?
The people of Spain had chosen to become equals. Each side was fighting for socialism. Each side was fighting against fascism. Each side had people who were willing to
betray those on their own side to gain power.
Democracy was fought for in name, but the outcome could not have been
anything other than fascism.
During the transitional conflict, infrastructure was in
disrepair, with shortages on everything, including food. But the people were hopeful, as they had a
belief that the revolution would provide for them in the future. People were joining the militia, partly
because the militia had access to food, which the militia had often
wasted. Training people to fight was
short and uninformative, for the lack of weapons meant that there was no need
to train people to fight with weapons. In trench warfare, the enemy was less of a
concern than surviving the cold, hunger, and boredom. But people wanted to fight, even were willing
to take orders in an army that did not have ranks.
Caveats?
This is a personal narrative of the Spanish Civil War,
making this a limited account of the events that took place. There is a bit of general information
provided in the appendices, but to understand the war would require more
research.
