Britannica
Sources used in this answer
Which militia did George Orwell join during the Spanish Civil War?
Created from Britannica articles
using AI.
AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
George Orwell
Known best for his powerful anti-utopian novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), English author George Orwell came to be regarded as a prophetic voice in 20th-century literature.
During the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell enlisted in the militia of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification, known as the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista).1
While he is often broadly associated with the Republican cause, he specifically chose to join this militia rather than the International Brigades favored by many other foreign volunteers. His experiences fighting on the front lines and witnessing political infighting in Barcelona were later documented in his autobiographical work, Homage to Catalonia.21