The allure of socialism. It's all dandy until you realise where all stuff come from.
The socialists were the primary (practically only) political opponents to Nazis. The Nazi's weren't socialists. The German socialist party were heroes who faced persecution, imprisonment and death to defend democracy while the cowards in the conservative and christian democratic parties accommodated Hitler. Fuck you.
And Orwell thought it was dandy until he ran into the soviets during the Spanish civil war.
Ah the marvels of american education. George Orwell left the spanish civil war with largely the same political views that he entered it with, he was still a socialist who opposed british colonialism (but doubted it would succeed).
The Spanish socialists and anarchists that George Orwell encountered in the spanish civil war weren't totalitarians. It was totalitarianism that he despised. George Orwell's primary complaint about the left during the interbellum years is that the intelligenstia, both socialist and liberal, were too willing to cave in to Hitler. As he saw it the left took the proposition that the British weren't perfect and pushed things to extremes. Overall, his interbellum politics are less sophisticated and noteworthy then his later stuff on totalitarianism. Basically he said that the rich and well educated will sell their country out but you can trust working people because they know how to rally around the flag.
"Just don't spill over the channel/pond/ocean and we will admire your existence."
"Admire" isn't quite the right word. "Despise" would be a bit more appropriate.The battle planning is quite intuitive I think, not to mention that you can pretty effectively still micro your forces if you want. Air combat is abstracted... Im okay with that really.
I really struggle with the battle planning. It tends to lead to a very irregular frontline. There will always be at least 1 division if possible but one province might have 1 while another has 9 and that 1 might be an unsupported brigade. It's also really bad at occupying large swathes of territory after a breakthrough. And it has an annoying habit of launching suicidal attacks on positions that can easily be bypassed. It will attack across a river into the hills on a position that can easily be surrounded.