Isherwood and war
Isherwood's father, Frank Bradshaw-Isherwood, was a colonel in the British Army. He was killed during World War I in the Battle of Ypres, France, in May 1915, at the age of 46. Isherwood was 10 years old at the time. His father's death "...deeply affected him, not only in his perspective of his father and how he would relate to his mother, but in his attitude towards the military and war itself." Isherwood's second novel, The Memorial, published in 1932, describes the impact on a family from the death of the father in World War I. The Memorial was the first of what would become the trademark for Isherwood: reflecting his life experience into the plot of a novel.
After being asked to leave Cambridge, he lived in Berlin and witnessed the rising power of Fascism, the Nazi Party, and Hitler. Isherwood describes the times in his autobiographical novels The Berlin Stories. In 1933, Isherwood fled Germany with his friend Heinz Neddermeyer seeking asylum for Heinz — who was refused entry to England. Heinz was finally arrested in May 1937 by the Gestapo for draft evasion and practising homosexuality.
Back in London, Isherwood's sympathies were with the left, but although the Anti-war movement flourished after World War I, it was fractured into opposing ideological groups. Some wanted to join the fight in the Spanish Civil War, others wanting to just let the Germans in, rather than go to war, still others advocated non-violent resistance, all of which had the effect of weakening their political power. The fighting in Spain was savage, and "...the left tore itself apart with squabbling and paranoia. Veterans came to feel that the idealism of the cause had been exploited, and many resented being policed by shadowy Communist enforcers."
In 1937, two of the largest peace groups joined forces; the No More War Movement merged into the Peace Pledge Union. The members attested to the following pledge: "War is a crime against humanity. I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war". Some of the leading authors and intellectuals of the time gave speeches and lent their names to the cause, including Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, and Bertrand Russell.
Inspired by Ernest Hemingway's reporting from the Spanish Civil War, in January 1938, Isherwood and his friend W. H. Auden traveled to China to cover the invasion by Japan and wrote Journey to a War (1939). They returned to England the following summer via the United States and decided to emigrate there in January 1939. At this point, Isherwood wasn't clear about his own anti-war beliefs. On the way to America, he realised he was a Pacifist, as he would be unwilling to kill his friend Heinz, "Heinz is in the Nazi army. I wouldn't kill Heinz. Therefore I have no right to kill anybody". He had lost his political faith, "I couldn't repeat the left-wing slogans which I had been repeating throughout the last few years."
After moving to California, Isherwood sought "...advice from Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley about becoming a pacifist, and, like them, he became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California." He applied for citizenship and registered as a Conscientious Objector. In Pennsylvania, he worked in a Quaker Hostel, helping to settle European Jews who were fleeing the Nazis.
In 1944, the translation of the Hindu scripture, Bhagavad Gita – The Song of God that the Swami and Isherwood had been working on was published. In the appendix, there is an essay by Isherwood titled The Gita and War. There Isherwood explains the Vedantic view of war and duty. The plot of the poem is that the whole of India is drawn into a great battle, and on the eve of the fight, Arjuna, the hero warrior of the epic poem, The Mahabharata, is taken between the two armies and sees friends, family, and worthy people on both sides, throws down his weapons and says, "I will not fight." The rest of the book has Lord Krishna, Arjuna's friend and advisor, explaining the nature of duty. It may be, for some person, at some time, proper to refuse to fight, but if the cause is righteous, and it's your duty as a warrior to fight, it would be a moral hazard to refuse.
