George Orwell, famed author of 1984 and Animal Farm, was introduced to the harsh realities of war and Stalinism while serving in the Spanish Civil War as a volunteer. Homage to Catalonia is a great read about Orwell's personal experiences. He participates in an assault against enemy trenches, goes on patrol into no-man's-land, and gets shot through his throat by a sniper. Later, his choice of joining the POUM Militia when he first arrived throws him into the middle of a civil war within a civil war when the Stalinists set about exterminating the POUM.

As friends and compatriots of his are arrested without cause, to be held until murdered, Orwell and his wife slip out of Spain and return to England. It was in Spain that Orwell came to see the similarities between Fascism, Nazism and Stalinist Communism, which were to affect his later writings.