ABSTRACT
When he was a soldier during the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell ran away—not from the enemy who shot him in the neck, but from ostensible friends on his own side. The war began in 1936, when the Spanish drove out their king and elected a government of centrists and leftists. However, right-wing fascists led by General Francisco Franco refused to accept the results of the election and rebelled. The three-year war that followed has been called a “rehearsal for World War II” because it pitted elected republican forces aided by communists (especially the Soviet Union) against a fascist army aided by the dictatorships of Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of Germany. Most notably, the Germans sent the Condor Legion to fight on the side of their Spanish fascist brothers. The Legion totaled less than 10,000 men at any one time, but because of rotation policies it gave over 16,000 German soldiers combat experience in this live-action “rehearsal” for World War II. The Legion, which included air elements, was notorious for the 1937 killing of civilians in the northern Spanish town of Guernica. One of Pablo Picasso’s most famous paintings, Guernica, commemorates the destruction of this Basque town.
