George Orwell came to fight in Spain convinced that fascism was the great enemy at that historical moment (and convinced that what he was fighting in Spain was fascism). He recounts his experiences in a Catalan POUM battalion (he was affiliated with a party of a similar orientation back in England), which were anything but glorious, since the central themes of his account are the lack of real action and the scarcity and poor condition of the weapons. However, he enjoys the company of the Spaniards, for whom he has praise, despite repeatedly criticizing their indolence. A bullet that passes through his throat, leaving him with nothing more than a temporary loss of voice, is the closest he comes to anything heroic.
The real danger came later, in the rear. In fact, the most famous part of this work is also the most interesting. I am referring to the two appendices, where he describes the persecution of the POUM members by the PSUC under Stalin’s orders and controlling the forces of order. Orwell sees the Stalinists as counter-revolutionaries, willing to compromise with the established order and thereby clip the wings of the people: in short, accomplices of fascism, ironically the very accusation the Stalinists directed at them. Orwell managed to escape in time from that hell within a hell. His two best-known novels, 1984 and Animal Farm, show that he had learned where the enemy of humanity lay.