The Thirties and Forties were anything but the good old days.
In the U.S. we saw a great economic depression that produced 25% unemployment. In 1930s Europe times were equally tough, so that the entire free world was vulnerable to the Soviet propaganda machine. A second world war proved to be sufficiently earth-shaking so as to almost make us forget what preceded it.
If the global earthquake that was WWI cracked the foundations of modern Europe, WWII left it in shambles.
I am of the conviction that everything has pros and cons. Hence, if we seek we can we find a positive in these global wars. Yes. They proved to put an end to the Age of Colonialism. South American, African and Southeast Asian nation states would at last be released from their colonial bonds to create their own destinies through self-rule. The colonialist meta-narrative was dead.
Unfortunately, not all of these peoples were prepared, and in the midst of their own internal power struggles, the major powers re-defined what was happening in each new nation through a new meta-narrative, through the lens of the Cold War.
George Orwell, a journalist, had the opportunity to see up close what was occurring in many of these national power struggles. He had also seen Colonialism up close, and the false…
