Essay Review - George Orwell – Wells, Hitler And The World State

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H G Wells had predicted not only the invention of the aero plane, but also that its development would create a new international age of science and technology that would cause the nationalistic Fascism and Communism to melt way. To Wells, the man of science would draw us away from the barbarism of war, religion-rooted ideologies forever. The nation conquering the skies would guide the World to a new age of invention, plenty and peace. Wells was also dismissive of the threat posed by dictators like Hitler, who he saw as a Chaplinesque absurdity. To Orwell, writing in 1941, Wells was being absurd in holding on to these beliefs despite two and a half years of conflict with the Third Reich. The aero plane was being used even as Orwell wrote, to bomb cities to rubble. It was not easy to see the aero plane as the means to salvation – more of a bringer of death, destruction and hellfire. Orwell saw Hitler as what he really was- an extremely serious threat – not a joke. The Nationalistic power had control of a powerful scientific, machine and transport generating power. The technology Wells saw as leading to our salvation was in danger of destroying us all. The Nationalists were in the position of becoming internationalists, with the Nazi Fatherland at the epicentre of a global empire of hate. To Orwell, Wells was clinging to his cozy utopian sense of the future, one that might still have seemed possible up to 1918, but which was now totally obsolete. Orwell is by no means rude to Wells about this – he felt it was a great tragedy that the events of the Second World War destroyed Well’s noble vision forever. This is a great essay for its raw honesty, as opposed to essays of the time written for propaganda purposes. To Orwell, Hitler was a genuine threat, not to be treated casually, or dismissively, and the World had already changed irrecoverably – what would be won by victory was not going to be a return to pre-war values. Of the great authors, the Dystopian minded Orwell clearly comes across sadly as the prophetically accurate of the two. Arthur Chappell