Pondering about the relevance of WWII in 1984 as I potter my way through Fatherland by Robert Harris (which I heartily recommend, by the way) and was wondering about the inspiration behind Orwell's Newspeak abbreviations of the ministries in Oceania - MiniLuv (Ministry of Love), MiniTru (Ministry of Truth) etc.
In Nazi Germany, the polizei departments were commonly abbreviated in a similar way - the most often seen one being the Geheime Staatspolizei - the Gestapo. This was the same for the Kripo (Kriminal Polizei) and the Orpo (Ordnungspolizei) too.
Now, while obviously the point of Newspeak is to minimise the potential for thoughtcrime through language, I also read somewhere that some of the concepts behind 1984 lie in Orwell's vision of a Nazi-dominated world. For example, the Thought Police strongly resemble a hyperbolised gestapo, and the ideas of perpetual war would have appealed greatly to Hitler etc. So the influence coming from there would make some sense!
I do love when history happens in books. Nom!
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