The Forensic Orwell

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Tabulating the War in 1943

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Introduction

George Orwell’s scripts, whether typed by him or his staff, today look miserable things, mainly due to the exigencies of the war: on poor paper, ink fading as typewriter ribbons were used beyond their proper date, and cramped as they were typed single-spaced to save paper. Consequently, one can look at a page of script and not be immediately struck by the intense analysis and specification that Orwell put into his article.

If we take advantage of the space we now have, and the benefits of insetting sections to make their subordinate place obvious we can begin to see the forensic level at which Orwell was working. Here is one example subject to that editing process which reveals the detail at which Orwell worked.

The Article

Here are the first two paragraphs of George Orwell’s News Commentary, or News Review, for the BBC Eastern Service, broadcast on March 13^th 1943:-

As this is the last News Commentary that I shall do in this series I would like to end up with a general review of the World situation rather than a survey of the week’s news. As a matter of fact there has not been a great deal that is new to comment on this week. The big events of the week have been the Russian capture of Vyasma on the central Front, the German counterattacks against Kharkov on the Southern Front, —from this morning’s news it is evident that Kharkov is in danger—the Germans claim to be already in the City, and the unsuccessful German attack in the southern part of Tunisia, but the situation has not fundamentally changed. Even the Red Army’s recapture of Vyasma, important though it is, could be foreseen, as probable when Rzhev fell. So, let me use my time, this week, in trying to give a comprehensive picture of the whole war and trying to predict in very general outlines what is likely to happen.

If you look at the war, as a whole, there are six factors which really count, four of them military, and two political. Of course, they’re not separable from one another, but one can see the situation more clearly by listing them separately. The first factor is the failure of the Germans to carry out their full plans in Russia. The second factor is the coming Anglo-American attack on Continental Europe. The third factor is the war of the German U-boats against the United Nations Nations lines of supply. The fourth factor is the Japanese offensive in the Far East and its slowing down for reasons which we are not yet quite sure about. The fifth factor is the failure of the Nazi New Order in Europe, and the sixth is the attempt of the Japanese in the Far East to set up a New Order designed to benefit only themselves, like that of the Germans in Europe.

(BBC Eastern Service) Weekly News Review, 59. 13th March 1943

The same text laid out in table form looks like this:

As this is the last News Commentary that I shall do in this series I would like to end up with a general review of the World situation rather than a survey of the week’s news. As a matter of fact there has not been a great deal that is new to comment on this week. The big events of the week have been

• the Russian capture of Vyasma on the central Front,

• the German counterattacks against Kharkov on the Southern Front, —from this morning’s news it is evident that Kharkov is in danger—the Germans claim to be already in the City,

• and the unsuccessful German attack in the southern part of Tunisia, but the situation has not fundamentally changed.

Even the Red Army’s recapture of Vyasma, important though it is, could be foreseen, as probable when Rzhev fell. So, let me use my time, this week, in trying to give a comprehensive picture of the whole war and trying to predict in very general outlines what is likely to happen.

If you look at the war, as a whole, there are six factors which really count,

• four of them military,

• and two political.

Of course, they’re not separable from one another, but one can see the situation more clearly by listing them separately.

• The first factor is the failure of the Germans to carry out their full plans in Russia.

• The second factor is the coming Anglo-American attack on Continental Europe.

• The third factor is the war of the German U-boats against the United Nations Nations lines of supply.

• The fourth factor is the Japanese offensive in the Far East and its slowing down for reasons which we are not yet quite sure about.

• The fifth factor is the failure of the Nazi New Order in Europe,

• and the sixth is the attempt of the Japanese in the Far East to set up a New Order designed to benefit only themselves, like that of the Germans in Europe.

NOW ORWELL EXPANDS ON THESE SIX POINTS

The first of these factors is the most important, because Germany is the main enemy and the Japanese cannot really continue to fight alone if Germany goes out—they might manage to prolong the war for several years. If you look at the map of Russia, you can see that however much territory they’ve over-run, the Germans have totally failed in what was probably their most urgent war aim and are likely to fail in their secondary one.

• Their primary war aim was to capture the oil-fields of the Caucasus. It was for this reason that the Germans decided to attack Soviet Russia, probably as far back as the winter of 1940. Since Britain had failed to collapse, like France, they saw they were in for a long war, and it was absolutely necessary for them to have bigger supplies of oil than they could get from European sources and from synthetic production.

• Secondly, they had to have food, which meant that they had to have the fertile lands of the Ukraine. Europe is capable, or nearly capable, of feeding itself, but not if a large proportion of its manpower is making weapons of war for the German army instead of producing food. In peace-time, Europe could import food from the Americas, but with Britain blockading Germany at sea, the Ukraine was an absolute necessity for the German war machine. As everybody knows, the Germans have failed to get to the Caucasus, but they still hold the greater part of Ukrainia. It is probably a mistake in spite of the defeats they have had in the last few months to imagine that they will give this up without fighting. They would probably regard the Dneiper river and a line containing the whole of Poland and the Baltic States, as the last Frontier, to which they could afford to retreat. Probably they will try to stand on the defensive on this line and muster their forces to meet the Allied attack from the west, but this strategy puts them in a dilemma. If they give up the Ukraine, they have not the food resources to carry on the war indefinitely. If they hold on to it, they’re defending an immensely long Frontier, inevitably tying up a bigger army than they can afford to use. We don’t really know what the German casualties have been in the two Russian winters, but certainly they have been large and the total mobilisation orders in Germany, together with endless attempts to make the European populations work harder, shows that the German man power position is becoming serious. Broadly, one can say, that by provoking both Britain and Soviet Russia, and the United States, against them, the Germans have made sure that they cannot win and can only hope, at best, for a stalemate. We may expect them, therefore, during this year to make violent political offensives aimed at sowing dissension among the United Nations. They will try to play on

  • American fear of Bolshevism,

  • Russian suspicion of Western capitalism,

  • and Anglo-American jealousy,

and they probably calculate that they have better chances along those lines than on purely military action.

• The second and third factors, the Anglo-American attack on Europe, and the submarine war, cannot be considered separately. Much the best chance the Germans have of staving off an attack from the West is to sink so many ships that the United Nations, not only cannot transport a big force oversea, but what is more important, keep it supplied. When one realises that one infantry soldier needs about seven tons of supplies, one realises what an attack against Europe means in terms of shipping. Even if the Germans could not stave off an attack from the West altogether they might keep the United Nations embarrassed until the attack started too late to finish the war this year. In that case, the stalemate the Germans are probably hoping for, will become more likely of attainment. The campaign in Tunisia really has the same object, that is, to keep a big Allied Army tied up in Africa, and prevent it crossing the sea to Europe. I don’t care to predict too much about the results of these German delaying tactics because there’re two things we don’t yet know.

  • First of all, naturally, we don’t know what is the Allied plan of attack.

  • Secondly, we don’t know the real facts about the shipping situation because the Governments of the United Nations, probably justifiably, don’t publish figures of shipping losses, but we do know certain facts from which inferences can be drawn, and on the whole, they’re hopeful.

    • The first is that the United Nations succeeded in transporting a large army to Africa, evidently to the surprise of the Germans, and are transporting an American Army which grows every day across the Atlantic to Britain.

    • The second is that the food situation, which is probably an index of the shipping situation, has not deteriorated in Britain during the past two years.

    • The third is the enormous expansion of the American shipbuilding industry, and the fourth the growing improvement in the methods—surface ships, aeroplanes and bombing of bases, —of dealing with the submarine. The U-boats have been the Germans’ strongest card hitherto, but there is no strong reason for thinking that they will be able to slow down Allied preparations indefinitely.

We don’t know enough about Japanese strategy to be certain whether they’ve been seriously crippled by the blows they’ve had in the past eight months, or whether they’ve slowed down their campaigns according to some definite plan. All we do know is that a year ago they over-ran very rapidly the countries bordering the south-west Pacific and since then have made no progress but on the contrary have lost some valuable bases and an enormous amount of war material. Japan’s weakest spot, like that of Britain, is shipping. They have certainly lost an immense quantity, both war ships and merchant ships, at a time when they need ships more and more in order to keep their island possessions running. Moreover, they’ve nothing like the power of replacement of the highly industrialised states. It is safe to say that the United States can build more ships in a month than Japan can in a year. And in aeroplane construction the margin is even greater.

• It seems likely, therefore, that if the Japanese did not go on to attack India and Australia, as everyone expected, it was not because they did not want to but because they could not.

• On the other hand, we ought not to assume that they will collapse quickly when Germany is finished with.

The Japanese cannot afford to retreat from the mainland of Asia any more than the Germans can afford to give up Eastern Europe. If they did so, their industrial and military power would decline rapidly. We may expect, therefore, that the Japanese will defend every inch of what they have got and in the past few months they have shown how obstinately they can fight. But probably Japanese grand strategy, like that of Germany, is now aiming at a stalemate. They perhaps calculate that if they can consolidate their position where they are, the United Nations will be too war weary to go on fighting when Germany is defeated, and might be willing to make terms on the basis of everyone keeping what he has got. Of course, the real object of this would be to renew the war at the first favourable opportunity and we ought to be on our guard

• against Japanese peace-talk,

• no less than against German.

As to the political factors, there is no need to talk any longer about the failure of the Nazi New Order in Europe. By this time, it stinks in the nose of the whole world. But it is important to realise that Japanese aims and methods are essentially similar, and that the Japanese New Order or, as they call it, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, will have the same appearance when the necessary time-lag has elapsed. The Japanese are plundering the lands under their control and it does not make very much difference if in one place they plunder by naked violence and in another by means of a faked paper money which will not buy anything. They must plunder Asia, even if they did not wish to do so, because they cannot afford to do otherwise. They must have the food and raw materials of the occupied countries and they cannot give anything of corresponding value in return. In order to pay for the goods they seize, they would have to turn their factories over to producing cheap consumption goods, which would be impossible without slowing down their war industries. The same essential situation exists in Europe, but less crudely because the countries over-run by the Germans are more industrialised. It is as certain as anything can well be that within a fairly short time, the Malays, Burmese and other peoples now under Japanese rule will find out all about their so-called protectors and realise that these people who were making such golden promises a year ago are simply a hoard of locusts eating their countries naked. But just how soon that will happen is a more difficult question and I do not intend to be able to answer it exactly. At present, comparatively little news comes to us from Japanese occupied territory, but we have one great and unimpeachable source of evidence and that is, China. The war in China began five years before it began in the rest of Asia and there are innumerable eye witness accounts of the way the Japanese have behaved. By almost universal agreement it is a regime of naked robbery with all the horrors of massacre, torture and rape on top of that. The same will happen, or has already happened, to all the lands unfortunate enough to fall under Japanese rule. Perhaps the best answer to the propaganda which the Japanese put out to India and other places is simply the three words LOOK AT CHINA. And since I am now bringing these weekly Commentaries to an end I believe those three words LOOK AT CHINA are the best final message I can deliver to India.

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Tabulation by L J Hurst