Reading Through War #8: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

In late 1936 British author and journalist George Orwell volunteered to fight for the PUAM in Spain, Homage to Catalonia is an account of his experience in one of the more complex 20th century conflicts. 

Orwell blended journalism and travelogue in his account, emphasizing the drudgery of everyday life as a soldier, providing the reader with an explanation of the political situation, documenting his harrowing experiences during the "May Days" of 1937, getting seriously wounded, and then having to flee the country. 

Married and his 30s, his decision to take up arms in Spain was not taken lightly. Orwell explains the excitement of seeing people finally standing up to fascism as Germany and Italy and Italy were thumbing their noses at the international order. At the same time, Orwell eschews any romantic rhetoric about saving the free world, he's dispassionate and not afraid to portray himself in an unflattering light. 

Most of Orwell's time at the front was uneventful. He goes into detail on the drudgery of everyday life in the trenches: enduring bad food, wearing dirty clothes for several days, dealing with lice and rats, contending with the unpredictable climate. He describes taking part in one engagement and chasing a fascist with a bayonet and being repelled at the entire experience. 

He got on well with his fellow soldiers. Being socialists, the structure of the army was designed as a model for a classless society. Barriers between officers and volunteers were broken down, if a soldier felt an order was unjust an officer was obliged to explain himself. The spirit was egalitarian and Orwell was inspired by how everyone adapted to the system. 

To defeat Franco and his Nationalist army, who had material support from Hiter and Mussolini, it was essential for the left to stay unified. Orwell spends a lot of time on the infighting from within the popular front, a coalition of communists, socialists, anarchists, and liberals. Differences in strategy and ideology boiled over during the "May Days."

Orwell happened to be leave in Barcelona with his wife Eileen O'Shaugnessy when the uprising started, an internecine struggle among the loyalists. His account borders on comical, he was unsure what was exactly going on and why. The communists resented the Trotskyists, while everyone had issues with the anarchists. Orwell criticizes how the news media covered the uprising, often repeating talking points reflecting political bias. The organization Orwell was affricated with, the PUAM, became persona non grata shortly after the uprising.

On returning to the front Orwell was shot through the neck by a sniper. He spent weeks in various hospitals, some of them horrifying - he overheard a man enduring surgery without anesthesia. He lost his voice for a time and dealt with painful nerve damage in his extremities. He was discharged afterwards but was nearly imprisoned during the ensuing crackdown on the PUAM. Many of the volunteers who came from different countries to fight fascism disappeared in the prisons, isn't politics just great!

Homage to Catalonia illustrates how the politics of the 1930s were anything but simple. Imagine you're idealistic person in Europe or North America, you read about heroic struggle of the left in Spain, volunteer only to find just as much dysfunction on the left. It would be easy to become non-political or cynical. Fascism was eventually defeated by a coalition of capitalist and communist countries, but in the 1930s such an alliance seemed unfeasible. 

What's remarkable is Orwell avoided letting polemic take over his account. Despite all the infighting, the often-inhospitable conditions, and getting seriously wounded - he never loses sight of the larger picture:

This war, in which I played so ineffectual a part, has left me with memories that are mostly evil, and yet I do not wish that I had missed it. When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this - and however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaughter and physical suffering - the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings. (230)

There's much to value in Orwell's account. Homage to Catalonia provides subtle warnings on the dangers of totalitarianism: the control of narratives, the demand for party discipline, crackdowns on political opponents, and bad actors thriving on chaos. Whether Orwell writes 1984 without his experiences in Spain is a compelling question, certainly seeing the machinery of authoritarian systems from the ground was a major influence. 

For the 21st century, Homage to Catalonia presents idealism with calm realism. Any political ideology or movement can fall prey to totalitarian impulses. Humanism and a sense of decency are presented as antidotes to those authoritarian impulses. Understanding and putting aside illusions about human nature are also crucial for any democratic movement to prevail.  

Reading Through War #7: Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain

Vera Brittain (1893-1970) volunteered as a nurse during the First World War while her brother Edward and fiancé Roland served on the Western Front. Her memoir Testament of Youth covers the years before, during, and after the war. It's a powerful work on several levels. It captures the innocence and ideas of young people in England in the years leading to the conflict and the disillusionment in the years after which shaped the 20th Century. 

The most vivid sections in Testament of Youth are Brittain's descriptions of working in the hospitals. Victorian pieties disappeared, Brittain recalls having not even seen a naked man before nursing, but after a week the sight was common. All the talk of heroism and English manhood rang hollow when witnessing men being terrified of looking at their ghastly wounds or listening to a man screaming and writhing in extreme pain as he died slowly through the night. The bodily harm wrought by modern weaponry on such a mass scale was horrific. Soldiers in paralysis from the constant bombing, if not broken physically, they were mentally. Disease also spread like wildfire in the hospitals, the rotten smell of death and infection permeating the wards. 

Brittain's fiancé Roland was killed in December of 1915, and her brother Edward served on the Italian front and died in 1918. Brittain goes into detail on her grief, how it was handled by institutions and families. Her parents became shadows of their former selves. The sense of loss, something millions of families experienced during the First World War, leaves a deep sadness. 

Brittan had a literary background, her studies at Oxford were interrupted by the war but she returned later and earned her degree. Testament of Youth employs many different literary methods. Some sections read like a diary, while other parts are more journalistic. Brittain includes her own poetry and those of her friends. One gets a sense of events happening in real time. Historians have the privilege to shape narratives, but not if you are living through them. Making sense of the rush of events was challenging, Brittain explains how newspapers routinely downplayed the horrors at the front. 

Out of Brittain's tragic losses came a feminist and pacifist consciousness. She witnessed firsthand how institutions worked and acted against the interests of women. Nurses were put through long hours and poor living conditions, often at the mercy of insensitive doctors and head nurses. Nurses were expected to be cheerful and maintain and attractive appearance, they were to remain positive even in the grimmest of conditions. 

Reading Testament of Youth adds a personal dimension to the First World War when compared to history books like The Sleepwalkers or The Guns of August in which powerful men treat the world like a chessboard. Brittain gets to both the helplessness and grief people experienced - and their resilience. 

After the war Brittain became a writer and activist. 

Reading Through War #6: The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman

The Guns of August is considered a classic of popular history. Sources confirm JFK admired the book and often spoke of it before and during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And he applied lessons from it during the crisis: Always allowing the other side options in a crisis and to not be pushed into decisions by overzealous military advisors. So, in that sense, The Guns of August was a rare work of history that also influenced history. 

The strongest part of the book is the first half, as Tuchman details the run up to the war. It reads like a historical pageant of blustering monarchs, skittish diplomats, and hardened generals. Tuchman excels at painting portraits of the major players, and the stresses they were under. One feels the weight of events as war becomes more likely. All the decades of war plans and diplomacy were coming to a head. 

Tuchman switched up the style for the book's second half, going to great lengths to describe the choreography of the opening military campaigns. Paragraph after paragraph describes the movements of vast armies, attacks and counterattacks, and frantic decision making. The effect is flattening. Unlike Tolstoy, whose philosophically acute accounts of military battles in War and Peace negating the power of leaders to shape history, Tuchman is more fascinated with those at the top making the decisions. Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty, comes off as especially heroic. 

The opening campaigns were massive collisions of armies with unprecedented casualties. The scope of the battles becomes so large and complex, attempts to impose narratives on them presents challenges. Millions of lives were at stake, and thousands died violently or were severely maimed. I suppose this speaks to a limitation of military history, it can describe and even explain, but even the smoothest prose fails to balance the emotional and psychological cost of what is happening on the ground.

The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark focused more on systems and how the search for causes of why the war happened are often diffuse and defy logic. It goes back to the question of why rational people make irrational decisions. I think that's why The Guns of August loses some of its power once the focus shifts to war, it's harder to place order on those events through writing, the speed and complexity require something more than map rooms and blow by blow accounts. 

The irony is that 1914 ultimately ended in anti-climax. The war settled into stalemate and strategic deadlock after the desperate Battle of the Marne. Tuchman undoubtedly wrote a classic on the start of the First World War and the personalities involved, allowing history to come alive for many readers (including a President) - and that's no small feat. 

Reading Through War #5: The Sleepwalkers - Christopher Clark

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Cambridge historian Christopher Clark tackles the thorny question of how the Great War happened. Clark goes to great lengths to provide the perspectives of all the participants and avoids the blame game common in these discussions. Human agency is considered; there were many powerful personalities involved, but they were often nullified within the complex systems of the modern state. 

Traditionally, when the origins of the First World War are taught one goes to imperialism, nationalism, and militarism. Clark never denies the importance of these long-term causes, but he also avoids easy answers. If Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower analyzed the cultural symptoms that led to world war, The Sleepwalkers takes a more forensic approach.

The international situation from 1900-14 was fluid, alliances were shaky and could shift at any moment. Those in power had trouble making sense of all the variables. Germany had dreams of world empire but realized diplomatic isolation in Europe would paralyze them. Great Britain and Russia were tentative Allies but still competing for resources in Central Asia. Both Russia and Austria-Hungary struggled with the Balkans and the decline of the Ottoman Empire and managing the power vacuum. When national passions and geopolitical goals start to coalesce, war becomes more likely. 

Or take the case of Serbia. Emerging as one of the strongest powers in the Balkans, a violent coup in 1903 brought in a more liberal constitution, but civilian leaders lived in terror of inflaming rogue elements in the military. Instability in the Balkans threatened to draw in the Great Powers. While the Austria-Hungarian Empire was often portrayed as a dysfunctional state with too many internal problems, Clark argues the Hapsburg Empire worked well in administrating a diverse population with dozens of languages. The assassination of the Archduke brought the situation to a head, a moment that activated the alliance system.

Clark painstakingly follows the decisions made by each nation based on perceived interests. This is where The Sleepwalkers both clarifies and complicates things. The decision-making processes in every country were different, factors of personal diplomacy, agendas within bureaucracies, and false perceptions all enter the equation. All sides believed the conflict would be brief, famously over by Christmas. Either total victory or defeat, but stalemate was not considered likely. They sleepwalked into catastrophe.

For a forensic investigation of the diplomatic missteps that led to war, The Sleepwalkers will provide a detailed picture, although the descriptions of these systems within them can get laborious. The lack of humanity and psychological insight is the book's main weakness. Tuchman is stronger on getting the cultural temperature, larger powerful forces were in play. Taylor is more enthralled with the workings of systems and the power players within them.

I recall a history course and the Professor talking about pre-WWI aristocracy and their enthusiasm for massive hunts, sometimes slaughtering animals by the hundreds over the course of a day. Massive displays of arms and taxidermy in their estates. There was a fascination with violence and mass slaughter among those who started the war. Clark never interrogates such questions. 

The Sleepwalkers achieves its goal of explaining how Europe went to war but left this reader wanting on the why question. Gambling With Armageddon by Martin J. Sherwin suggested war was avoided during the Cuban Missile Crisis due to nothing more sheer luck, the systems were thwarted, but that was not the case in 1914. 

Christopher Clark. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. New York: Harper, 2012.

Reading Through War #4: The Proud Tower - Barbara Tuchman

The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara Tuchman provides a kaleidoscopic view of the West before the Great War, moving across politics, intellectual currents, and artistic life. The specter of 1914 hangs over the book, and it raises a familiar question: Was the rupture inevitable or a series of contingent decisions that might have gone differently? The tension between inevitability and human agency looms over the book. While Tuchman avoids any explicit answer on this question, one gets a sense from the book that the rapid pace of political, social, and technological change was all heading towards a massive shock. 

Structured as a collection of essays, The Proud Tower focuses on modernity and change. England's partition class was losing its grip, while France was polarized over the Dreyfuss Affair. Germany was flush with dreams of becoming a world power, Tuchman chooses composer Richard Strauss as its personification. America was also finding its way to world power after the 1898 Spanish-American War. Yet beneath all the empire building and technological leaps sat a deep unease. Anarchists wanted to remake society from top to bottom, while the Socialists promised a political program to remedy class inequality, but fractured over goals and method. 

Tuchman leans into atmosphere more than argument, texture in favor of interpretation. She paints mini portraits of many figures from English Prime Minister Arthur Balfour to Naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. The litany of profiles can be a bit much and there's a tendency to substitute anecdote for biography. The sections on England are traditional political history focused on personalities, while an essay on the Hague falls into dry diplomatic history. Her chronicle of Strauss and Germany really shines as a portrait of artistic genius/megalomania and the restlessness of a nation careening towards catastrophe. 

What lingers most is Tuchman's sense of time and place. She allows the reader to live in the cultural climate and understand historical actors dealing with rapid change. The prose is refined even though it under explains at times. She does an admirable job of suggesting why some of the main players in Europe embarked on war in 1914, ensuring the reader will know the landscape when embarking on a deeper study. 

Reading Through War #3: Gambling with Armageddon - Martin J. Sherwin

In retrospect the Cuban Missile Crisis reminds us of the fragility of decision-making systems under extreme pressure. Gambling With Armageddon avoids the mythmaking that many of President Kennedy's group of advisors, given the futuristic name "Ex-Comm", were cool rationalists. At certain points every member pushed for an invasion of Cuba, which had a high probability of triggering a chain reaction leading to nuclear catastrophe. Everyone was prepared for war and seemingly made their own peace with that decision.

The political pressures of the Cold War led to the existential moment of the crisis. Kennedy and his advisors always had domestic politics on their minds, any hint that concessions were made must never see the light of day. Khruschev insisted the missiles placed in Turkey and Europe were like a loaded gun to the head of the Soviet Union, placing missiles in Cuba reciprocated the feeling for Americans.  Khruschev got the missiles out of Turkey and secured the long-term survival of Castro. Kennedy got the missiles out of Cuba and salvaged his legacy as a master of managing a crisis.

The crisis also showed how technology limited the actions of both sides. In a compressed time frame, each side had to consider their options and possible consequences. A nuclear exchange would destroy civilization, nullifying all human achievements. Sherwin contends we got lucky and still live on borrowed time. If even the most rational individuals barely dodged a bullet, what if unbalanced or delusional minds are in control? 

The 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still ends with an alien intelligence warning humanity they might have to intervene if Earth continues its self-destructive path, which is oddly comforting, a superintelligence protecting us from ourselves. But no insurance policy against nuclear war exists, we are stuck with ourselves. 

Sherwin credits political cartoonist Herb Block to summing up the crisis best.

Reading Through War #2: Gambling with Armageddon - Martin J. Sherwin

Martin Sherwin's analysis of the lead up to the Cuban Missile Crisis traces the evolution of nuclear policy through the Truman (1945-53) and Eisenhower (1953-61) administrations. Truman viewed atomic weapons as a superweapon of last resort. While the use of atomic bombs was always on the table, during the Korean War (1950-53) they were never used.  

Eisenhower's election brought major changes. Ike wanted atomic bombs to be the basis of defense policy, in what became known as the New Look. Known for his poker skills since he was a cadet at West Point, Eisenhower decided to go all in on nuclear weapons. The budget would go towards building more bombs, the idea was to get more bang for the buck by relying less on conventional weapons and a large standing army. During a crisis, nuclear saber rattling would get everyone in line. But the approach proved unwieldy. 

Along with Secretary of State John Fosters Dulles, Eisenhower spoke in private about breaking the taboo of using atomic weapons (80). But when push came to shove, the policy tended to limit options. Was using nuclear weapons over the Taiwan Straits or relieving the French in Vietnam wise? Humane? Waving the nuclear stick never got the desired effect, and it made the Soviets more paranoid, so they increased their production of bombs. 

Kennedy's election in 1960 upset Eisenhower, he believed JFK was too weak and inexperienced for the job. Flexible response became the byword of the New Frontier, a recalibration of defense policy, one more versatile and adapted to counter-insurgency strategy. JFK also wanted more engagement with the Soviet Union. But his campaign rhetoric about missile gaps trapped him into continuing the arms race, and he was determined to stay on the right of Nixon on foreign policy - partly I suspect a reaction to McCarthyism. 

During all the strategizing, personal diplomacy became an important subplot of the Cold War. Fidel Castro became ruler of Cuba in January of 1959, and in April he visited the United States. He made a whirlwind tour of speaking engagements and TV appearances. Non-committal on the Cold War, he continually denied being a Marxist, and instead focused on agricultural reform and restoring prosperity to Cuba. He spent three hours with Nixon, Eisenhower skipped town because he loathed any Latin American leader not fiercely anti-communist, Nixon's assessment of him was surprisingly canny. 

In September, the Premier Khruschev also visited America. He met with Ike at Camp David, visited Hollywood and was charmed by starlets Shirley Maclaine and Marilyn Monroe, was denied entry to Disneyland, spent time in Iowa with farmers to study their methods. There were moments of humor and tension, many Americans resented his presence; perhaps many felt hope. These moments were important in small ways, and perhaps bigger ways in the long run.

Khruschev meets with farmers in Iowa.

Sherwin's generous towards Kennedy, an idealist-realist who wanted to reduce tensions. He wrote: 

John Kennedy may have been raised in an overly protected environment, but he lived in a body that tortured him daily, constantly threatened his life, and formed the pillars of his character (168). 

But competing interests in his inner and outer circles fostered maddening complexities. Sherwin suggests Eisenhower worked to sabotage Kennedy, maneuvering him into allowing the CIA to proceed with their coup attempt on Castro. The CIA openly lied to Kennedy about the Bay of Pigs invasion, promising a foreign policy coup. The embarrassing failure damaged his administration and led him to distrust much of the national security apparatus. 

There's the sense of a President lost in labyrinths, he kept his own council and trusted few. Kennedy faced adversaries on multiple fronts from interests in the business community, national security, factions among his advisors - and within himself. The Kennedy years play like a paranoid thriller.