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.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.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.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?"