Historical Context: Animal Farm was published (per Wikipedia) in England on 17 Aug 1945. Nazi Germany had surrendered to the Allies (France, UK, US, USSR, etc.) on 8 May 1945. The great majority of the fighting and dying "needed" to achieve that victory was done by the USSR (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/World_Wa...).
Back in WWI, the UK had experienced 2X or so the number of deaths that it did in WWII. The UK's leaders were extremely aware of how bad a massive war, with a massive death toll, could be for a country.
Regardless of Orwell's fuming about freedom of the press, pro-Soviet English intellectual fashions, and such - for the WWII-era British government, not "rocking the boat" with Stalin, when "his" USSR was still critical to winning the war with a less-horrific British body count, would be a "d'oh, obviously" policy.
>"Regardless of Orwell's fuming about freedom of the press, pro-Soviet English intellectual fashions, and such - for the WWII-era British government, not "rocking the boat" with Stalin, when "his" USSR was still critical to winning the war with a less-horrific British body count, would be a "d'oh, obviously" policy."
On the other hand, we shouldn't forget that Stalin's USSR was also critical to starting the war as well.
In the smaller details, yes. But if the USSR of 1939 had been magically replaced with a idyllic nation of unarmed pacifists, Hitler's Germany would just as certainly have started the war.
Back in WWI, the UK had experienced 2X or so the number of deaths that it did in WWII. The UK's leaders were extremely aware of how bad a massive war, with a massive death toll, could be for a country.
Regardless of Orwell's fuming about freedom of the press, pro-Soviet English intellectual fashions, and such - for the WWII-era British government, not "rocking the boat" with Stalin, when "his" USSR was still critical to winning the war with a less-horrific British body count, would be a "d'oh, obviously" policy.