yes the politics of the Spanish Civil War and indeed WW2 were complicated,
I think maybe all politics is complicated. I think Orwell's sheep bleating 'four legs good , two legs bad', have several close relations on mudcat.

Animal Farm was based on Orwell's disgust with politicians after his experiences in Spain.

There was a widespread misunderstanding on the time that it was based on the Russian revolution - Major/Lenin, Snowball /Trotsky, Napoleon/Stalin. But it was Spain and the sufferings of the ordinary people and the equivocations and callousness of the politicos, that inspired it.

There was an attempt by the English government to suppress Animal Farm because it was thought it would piss off Stalin, who was our ally at the time.