I am currently reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's wonderful book, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, I am consistently amazed at how much stuff I just don't know about this time period. The actual War overwhelms the history books, crowding out any domestic events in these decidedly crowded years. Many, many passages are absolutely wonderful to read. They also uncomfortably underline how little real history I know and comprehend.
One passage reminds me of George Orwell's masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, definitely one of my favorite books of all time. I had always thought Nineteen Eighty-Four was brilliant because it portrays a futuristic dystopian world in breathtaking detail. It does do this, and does it in a way that should make it the envy of all fiction. But its real, insidious genius is to warn about the potential future in a way that is subtly, but definitively, a mirror of the present times. As I found out from No Ordinary Time, one way Orwell did this was to lift directly from what was, for him, recent history.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, there is an amazing scene in which Oceania switches sides in the war, declaring war against its former ally, Eastasia, and allying with its former foe, Eurasia. It happens during a rally, and the conditioned hatred of the population is such that it is accepted without puzzlement or question. The signs held at the rally, now directed against the wrong nation, are attributed to spies and saboteurs, and are hastily torn down.
What a puzzling scene! How could a people be so immersed in doublethink?
From No Ordinary Time:
On the political left, confusion reigned. FOr months, following the Nazi-Soviet pact, communist-leaning organizations had been busily engaged in marching for peace, provoking strikes, and opposing aid to England. With Russia under attack, however, these same forces began to cry out for immediate intervention and massive aid for Russia. Robert Sherwood recalled attending an interventionist rally in Harlem on the Sunday afternoon of the Russian invasion. When he entered the Golden Gate Ballroom, there was a communist picket line in front with placards condemning the Fight for Freedom supporters as "tools of British and U.S. Imperialism." By the end of the rally, the picket line had totally disappeared. "Within that short space of time," Sherwood marveled, "the Communist party line had reached all the way from Moscow to Harlem and had completely reversed itself."
That same day, in a different part of the city, Michael Quill, the left-leaning head fo the Transport Workers of New York, was delivering an angry speech denouncing the imperialist war, arguing that the American worker should have absolutely nothing to do with it. In the middle of his speech, he was handed a note informing him that the Nazis had invaded the Soviet Union. Without missing a beat, Quill totally changed direction, arguing that "we must all unite and fight for democracy."
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