Churchill and Orwell: the fight for freedom

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he struggle for freedom is a constant in our history, but there are moments when this battle becomes, if possible, more visible. The 20th century is a good example. Never before had humanity caused so many disasters together. Nationalism, fascism, and communism literally ravaged the old continent, opening deep scars across the globe, many of which persist to this day. Until practically the end of the century, the world experienced a practically continuous series of armed conflicts, among which the two world wars and also our tragic civil war stand out. It is the century of collectivism, as Paul Johnson rightly points out in his fundamental Modern Times, a collectivism, however, to which not all succumbed.

Two outstanding figures of the last century are Winston Churchill and George Orwell: two lives of very different origins, also of very different fortunes, though with many points of convergence, intertwined in a marvelous book by Thomas E. Ricks, award-winning reporter and national security expert, Churchill and Orwell. The Fight for Freedom (Península). The lives of both will be marked by the struggle for freedom: Churchill will be the first, and for almost a decade the only one, to alert the world to the dangers of making a pact with a demon named Adolf Hitler; Orwell, a writer and reporter from the left-wing world, will demonstrate the greatest courage of all, that of severely judging his own "side," being one of the most lucid voices in denouncing the abuses of the Soviet Union, already clearly visible in the Spanish Civil War, where he participated as a volunteer on the Republican side. Both adventurers, both brave – both will be close to death several times – both English, both defenders of freedom; a defense, moreover, not utilitarian or Cartesian in argumentation, but with a marked moral gravity.

Through the pages of Hicks, which glide nimbly like the best of novels (both characters are novelistic characters), we are presented with the joint biography of both figures, offering the reader two honest points of view, two distinct perspectives, of crucial years in universal history and where very few knew how to maintain sufficient moral stature, intellectual honesty, and strength of spirit not to be carried away by the totalitarianisms that would finally sweep away the democratic order, more or less consolidated since the mid-19th century, and which Stefan Zweig so well describes in his classic memoirs The World of Yesterday (Acantilado).

What to highlight from Churchill's life? Few lives have caused so many rivers of ink to flow. Few lives are as stimulating for understanding the concept of freedom. Hicks has the ability to highlight the essential (as he also does later with Orwell). Churchill was a moral leader, a statesman with a profound sense of duty (his two convictions were freedom and the integrity of the Empire, for him two sides of the same coin). Churchill was gargantuan with life, an excessive person: he would write, paint, drink champagne like few others, smoke like few others. He had a titanic capacity for work (one only needs to see the monumental written work he would bequeath; his memoirs of the Second World War are vaster than Gibbon's study of the fall of Rome), and he was an experienced strategist and soldier (he participated in military conflicts on all continents, including the two world wars where he would play an important role in the first, definitive in the second).

Churchill is also an example of how the leadership of one person can change the course of history. Without him, undoubtedly, and as all biographers agree, the history of Europe would have been very different. His ability to overcome failures and mistakes (which were not few), and transform them into learning is today a powerful reminder of the vital importance of enthusiasm and resilience for success in life. Churchill was a prisoner in the Boer War, he was ruined in the crash of '29, he was seriously run over in New York (where he almost lost his life), he had notable military failures, such as Gallipoli, or serious political and economic errors of judgment. However, always and every time he knew how to recover, move forward, and, moreover, never lose his sense of humor.

What to highlight about Orwell? Again, another intense, changing life, full of heroic moments and also significant errors of perception. Orwell, born Eric Blair –he adopted the pseudonym because he didn't expect any success from his early writings–, of humble origin (unlike Churchill) studied at Eton on a scholarship and, now yes, like Churchill, sought adventure in the confines of the Empire, in this case in India. He wrote against colonialism and joined socialist organizations, initially being an enthusiast of the Bolshevik Revolution (like many others, like presidents Wilson or Roosevelt; not so the always lucid on moral issues Churchill). This enthusiasm led him to Spain, to Barcelona, where, as Hicks points out, Orwell became Orwell. It was in Barcelona, as the English writer reflected in Homage to Catalonia (one of the most widely read international works to approach the Spanish Civil War), where Orwell discovered the perverse dynamic of Stalinism, a kind of state bullying that he would later reflect in two immortal novels: 1984 and Animal Farm. Two universal novels that are, even today, the most ferocious, understandable, and lucid critique of the consequences derived from totalitarian regimes, and very especially from the communist one.

Both, Churchill and Orwell, in their own way –although with common elements (both did it alone)–, fought for freedom, which involved swimming against the current, breaking away from the herd, and having to confront their own political allies. A delightful book, not only about freedom from a theoretical point of view, but about how to exercise it with responsibility, tenacity, and constancy. Two exemplary figures who are especially inspiring today in our current liquid world, too lacking in clear moral leaderships.