His description of trench warfare and hand to hand combat is horrifying.
I understood his views on communism better after reading the book.
I love all his writings about his own experiences, because his observations are so exceptionally well written, with the foreignness of early last century, plus the familiarity of his daily life. He then often writes later in those books about his political thoughts, which can be a bit more difficult to read e.g. Road to Wigan Pier.
IN case no one remembers
United Socialist Soviet Republic
Deutsch Democratic Republic
both not word plays on Democracy but word plays on social theory and what stateless means.
I'm not sure what you mean by "word plays on social theory and what stateless means". Both are perfectly descriptive labels; they just lie.
Depends what you mean by “exactly”. Having a precise vision of everything Orwell puts under the “socialism” umbrella, is of course impossible, but at the same time, there are things that are clear: when he says socialism he definitely means means no capitalism, that is no bourgeoisie sitting atop the society by the virtue of being the owning class.
Then there's the more "theoretical" definition of socialism. In the US it might seem bewildering why Orwell considered the anarchists of that war to be the "true socialists" (despite Orwell being a communist, he had a lot of support for them). But the truth is that both anarchism and communism far pretty well within the boundaries of socialist theory historically. And that's quite evident when you think about the fact that the final goal of both of these theories is a stateless society
Those who hated on orwell, really showed their colors back then. Totalitarians, just with different decorations.
The very point of Orwell was recognizing this, and the fundamental similarity across totalitarian ideologies.