George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf
Ooh! I just read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia". In it, he describes how he and his wife almost got into serious trouble for having a copy with them in Barcelona. Orwell had joined a loyalist political faction as a volunteer to help fight Franco's fascists, which were backed by Germany. However, communists took over the Catalan government, using Orwell's party as a scapegoat to gain power. They started rounding them all up as traitors. Thousands were put in jail or summarily executed.<p>The police came to search Orwell's wife's hotel room in the middle of the night and found a copy of Mein Kampf, which given the circumstances, was incredibly incriminating. But apparently they found other political books and luckily for her, decided it wasn't incriminating. I have no idea how.<p>I thought the book was enlightening and Orwell really is an amazing writer. I lived in Spain for a few years and visited most of the areas he went to, which made the whole book even more vivid. Orwell was sooooo lucky to escape the country. Just a week after he and his wife left, formal charges were brought against them as traitors in Spain.<p>By the way, I have no idea how I went this long without knowing it (maybe I forgot) but George Orwell is a pen name. I was reading the Wikipedia page about his wife and I was like, "Who the hell is Eric Blair?"