A Federation of Cassandras
How American Intellectuals tried to Save the Spanish Republic
Alexander Calder, Mercury Fountain, and Picasso’s Guernica at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris, 1937
Inge Gerrebrands Student no: 10411194
Thesis Supervisor: prof. dr. R.V.A. Janssens Master Thesis American Studies
University of Amsterdam July 01, 2019
Table of Contents
Introduction
3
1. The American Political Reaction to the Spanish Civil War
11
2. The American Cultural Response to the Spanish Civil War
24
Conclusion
52
Introduction
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica first came to New York in 1939 after touring Scandinavia and England. Picasso had been commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to paint a mobilizing piece for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie
Moderne in Paris that would get the world’s attention for the disastrous Civil War that had
been taking place in his native Spain since 1936. Picasso had been uninspired for a long time after accepting the government’s commission, but eventually finished his masterpiece in a little over a month after finally finding inspiration in the horrific bombing of civilians by German Nazi forces in the small Basque town of Guernica. Picasso’s iconic work, accompanied by many other Spanish artworks depicting the horrors of civil warfare, did receive the international attention that the Spanish public art commissioners had hoped for during the World Exposition. As France, England, and the United States had neglected to formally support the Spanish Republicans, the deposed Spanish government embraced the
Exposition Internationale as an opportunity to cry for help.
Alexander Calder was the only non-Spaniard contributing to the Spanish Pavilion with Mercury Fountain. Encouraged by his friend Joan Miró Calder designed the political artwork explicitly calling attention to the situation in Almadén with the Spanish town’s name in brass wired letters towering over the poisonous fountain filled with quicksilver. Almadén was economically important for the Spanish Republic, because it was home to a very lucrative mercury mine, but it was under siege by Franco’s Rebels in 1937. Calder’s contribution was an enormous success at the Exposition Internationale where visitors would throw coins into the liquid mercury. The money was gathered daily and directly donated to support youthful Spanish war victims.1 Calder was a continuous supporter of the Spanish Republic, most notably by welcoming Spanish refugees to the United States. He even took the famous director Luis Bañuel and his family into his home, enabling Bañuel to continue making his propaganda films for the Spanish Republican Cause in the United States.2
Both Mercury Fountain and Guernica were extremely impractical artworks to travel, respectively because of their chemical composition and size. Still, the American Artist’s Congress brought Guernica to the Valentine Gallery in New York in order to raise funds for the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign, before it moved to the Museum of Modern Art for the anticipated retrospective Picasso exhibition that drew record crowds. The masterpiece would
1 Jed Perl, Calder: the Conquest of Time: The Early Years, 1898-1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017),
chap. 25, Adobe ePub
be on an extensive loan to the Museum of Modern Art, because Picasso had prohibited it to be brought back to Spain during Franco’s reign and it remained in the collection of the MOMA until it finally traveled to Madrid in 1981 after both Picasso and Franco had passed away.
Guernica came to be an important symbol for the Spanish Civil War, and more importantly, it
depicts a universal image of human suffering as inflicted by war in general, giving it a timeless significance. It became a place of protest against the Vietnam War after the My Lai Massacre and it remains a reminder of civilian suffering during wartime.3 A reproduction of
Guernica even suggestively graces the walls of the UN headquarters as a memento within the
beacon of multilateralism and diplomacy.
Guernica was meant to mobilize people internationally into an war and
anti-fascist direction and it has done just that. Cultural institutions and individuals working in the art world within the United States were moved by an internationally pressing political conflict and recognized Guernica as political ammunition. By showing the painting to an American audience and collecting funds to support Spanish refugees, the painting became part of a larger movement within the cultural sector that aimed to raise awareness of the Spanish Civil War and may have even aspired to influence the course of American foreign policy.
Sometimes a painting can say more than a political leader can and, sometimes, cultural institutions can take up political endeavors more effectively than the actual government can. The government’s hands might be tied, restricted by legal, economic or political issues. The public role that non-governmental institutions and famous intellectuals have, can be extremely politically important. In the case of Guernica, the painting was commissioned by the deposed Republican government of Spain, but it continuous journey was marked by the role of cultural institutions.
Picasso’s famous painting is a mere example of a larger cultural movement that was active within the United States throughout the years of the Spanish conflict. The scholarship surrounding the role of the United States (or lack thereof) within the Spanish Civil War usually revolves around the narrative of neutrality and non-interventionism by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration. The American people are included in this narrative by the occasional mention of a public opinion poll in which the people appear to have little interest in getting involved in any foreign conflict. Interestingly, the Spanish Civil
3 Francis Frascina, "Meyer Schapiro's Choice: My Lai, Guernica, MOMA and the Art Left, 1969-70," Journal of Contemporary History, no. 3, vol 30 (1995), 483, 498.
War did manage to arouse a very strong sentimental response amongst many prominent intellectuals and artists.
Scholars and journalists alike often look back at the Spanish Civil War as the preamble to World War II and as a kick off of the heightened political tensions that continued through the second half of the twentieth century. On April 10, 1939, when Franco’s fascist forces had won the Spanish Civil War, Life published an extensive photojournalistic article showing a large picture of Francisco Franco with the description “the quirks of his character mean life or death to 2,000,000 Spaniards, possibly even life or death to the imperial ambitions of Britain, France, Italy or Germany.”4 The article continued with pictures of the defeated Spanish Republic, while looking towards the future referring to the Spanish Civil War as “a testing ground” and “a dress rehearsal for the next world war.”5
This claim to a direct linkage between the seemingly domestic Spanish conflict and the following decennia of international hostility has captivated academics since the 1950s. British academics were at the frontline of scholarship on the Spanish Civil War. During the Francoist dictatorship Spanish scholars did not do any independent research on this period in their own history. Only from the late 1990s onwards, the topic started gaining momentum within Spanish academia, often drawing heavily from Anglophone scholars such as historian Hugh Thomas who had already delved into the archival material during the past half-century. Conducting independent research and writing objective scholarship on the topic remains a challenge in Spain and some historians have been criticized for adopting a very particular angle favoring either of the battling sides too much.6
British historian Hugh Thomas published his vast account of the conflict under the title The Spanish Civil War in 1961 and later a revised version in 2003. He is considered to be an authority in his field and scholars up to this day still refer to his research as eminently important. Thomas’ comprehensive reference work also includes the various reactions within the international community. Regarding the United States, Thomas argued that American politicians were aware of the events happening in Spain, but felt a considerable distance towards them and held on to their policy of neutrality firmly and steadily. Thomas did point out the “natural sympathy for the Spanish Republic” of President Roosevelt and illustrated how the Spanish Civil War had reached the American public through propaganda and
4 NA, “Madrid Falls and General Franco’s Spain Joins the European Dictatorships” Life April 10, 1939, 17. 5 Ibidem, 20.
6 Guillermo Sanz Gallego, “La Traducción como Manipulación Historiográfica el el Exilio: Análisis Paratextual
e Intertextual de La Guerra Civil Española de Hugh Thomas,” Arbor, no. 780, vol 192 (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2016.780n4016.
mainstream media, similar to other Western countries.7 The Spanish Civil War also included American involvement by pointing out the substantial support in the form of food that was sent to Spain by the Red Cross and by explaining the phenomenon of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades. Although the various legal developments had made it nearly impossible for Americans to travel to Spain during the years of the Spanish Civil War, there was still a large number of them that made their way over to the conflict areas illegally to fight for the Spanish Republican government. Thomas did not focus on cultural figures, although he dropped the names of Hemingway and Picasso very sporadically.
Leading historian on the subject of the Spanish Civil War, Paul Preston, who had been a student and research assistant of Hugh Thomas, has published many books on the Spanish Civil War, dedicating half his career to the conflict. Preston published his research with titles such as La Muerte de Guernica (2016) and The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge (1978). Taken into account the topic of the American reaction to the Spanish Civil War however, it is most interesting to note that Preston edited Spain and the Great Powers in the Twentieth Century (1999) to which he also contributed with an essay and We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War (2007). This extensively researched book offers several international perspectives on the conflict. It shows an overview of the correspondents that were present in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, providing insight in the political restrictions that their employers forced upon them and in the journalistic climate of the late 1930s. Preston included American reporters in his narrative, most extensively focusing on left leaning journalists Louis Fischer, who covered the conflict for The Nation, and Herbert Matthews who reported to The New York Times. Aside from these professional journalists Preston included American authors turned war reporters Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Martha Gellhorn, and Josephine Herbst in his narrative, but since writing articles was more of a side activity to them, they do not hold a substantial place in Paul Preston’s research.
Scholars have also researched the American reaction to the Spanish Civil War in regard to broader questions about United States foreign policy during the second half of the 1930s, American isolationism, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in general. Historians have extensively explored the reasons and circumstances that lay behind the United States’ isolationist approach to the Spanish Civil War. This scholarship has predominantly
dealt with the politics of the late 1930s revolving around the dynamics between President Roosevelt and Congress and the tensions between domestic and foreign policies.
Richard P. Traina was an early contributor to this line of research with his 1968 publication American Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War. Traina highlighted President Roosevelt’s struggle with his slipping popularity, his personal attitude towards fascism, and the political tendencies of Congress that were decisive in America’s isolationist policy. His book is a detailed account of the actual policies that the United States adopted towards the Spanish Civil War focusing on the influence of a multitude of politicians, both American and foreign. Traina showed how none of the prominent American politicians initiated much creativity in their foreign policy and were not willing to take any unnecessary risks when it came to meddling with European peace. Traina seemed rather negative in his evaluation of the policy makers, describing them as inflexible, diplomatically incompetent, and undetermined. He particularly highlighted the important role of the US State Department and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Although the policies are often claimed to meet the American people’s demands by following public opinion, Traina did not discuss the American society of the 1930s or explain how this public opinion came about. The study did not mention any cultural individuals or socio-cultural movements.
American historian Foster Jay Taylor was an even earlier contributor to the historiography with his 1952 account of the American reaction to the Spanish Civil War: The United States and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. Writing from an American perspective,
Taylor referred to the claim of “some well-informed observers” that the non-interventionist attitude embraced by the American government was considered “the gravest error of American foreign policy during the Roosevelt Administration.”8 In his attempt to shed light on the combination of both the official diplomatic reaction and the American public opinion during the years of the Spanish conflict, Taylor discussed the origins of American neutrality. He went into great detail in his description of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, offering a good understanding of their logistics and the legal consequences that the volunteers faced. The role of American Catholics in influencing both public opinion and American politicians towards a pro-Nationalist stance is a substantial focus in this study. Taylor demonstrated that the international political importance of the Spanish Civil War was very clear to its contemporaries and was not only established in hindsight with the knowledge of historical disasters that directly followed such as World War II and the polarized and tense international
8 Foster Jay Taylor, The United States and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (London: Octagon Press Limited,
climate that defined the current of Taylor’s own time with McCarthyism at its height. However, strong anti-war sentiments swayed the American government to remain detached from the conflict. The aim of Taylor’s research seems to be to contextualize the conflict and to explain why both the American government and the American public generally supported strict non-interventionism during the 1930s with consequences that seemed hardly surprising from a 1950s perspective.
In his review of Taylor’s The United States and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 for the April issue of The American Historical Review in 1959, historian E. Dwight Salmon would historicize the conflict as follows: “with the wisdom of hindsight added, many more people have lamented the official conduct of the democratic governments as in essence appeasement of the totalitarian powers and thus directly contributory to World War II.”9 Salmon’s evaluation of the Spanish conflict within the international community is widespread in American academia, especially in publications written during the Cold War era.
The Museum of the City of New York curated an exhibition on the Spanish Civil War in 2007. In cooperation with New York University, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, and Insituto Cervantes, they published Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War edited by American historian Peter N. Caroll and American Hispanist James D. Fernandez. This publication features short essays on various topics from The New York City Left and the Spanish Civil War to New York Visual Artists and the Spanish Civil War and includes a vast amount of visual material. For example, it shows a picture of a “Lift the Embargo” meeting organized by leftist organizations at Madison Square Garden from 1937 and it presents pictures of several advertisement posters for fundraiser events for Spanish relief. The exhibition and accompanying scholarship clearly meant to shed light on the role that the Spanish Civil War played in the lives of New Yorkers at the time. The publication does not take a political approach, but means to address the topic from various angles of society, therefore creating a combination of different case studies that have very interesting things to say about the role of the Spanish Civil War in public and cultural life in New York. However, the book fails to connect these particularities to make a compelling argument about the existence of a broader American cultural movement that was sparked by the events taking place in Spain. Still, the essays and visual material do suggest that there is a lot more to the
9 E. Dwight Salmon, “The United States and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. By F. Jay Taylor,” The American Historical Review, no. 3, vol 64 (1959), 614.
story of American isolationism in the late 1930s than the aforementioned historians have acknowledged.
Apart from the individuals that had joined the Lincoln Battalion who have been studied to a considerable extent already, there were also American intellectuals who had taken an interest in watching the conflict unfold from up close such as the authors that Paul Preston included in his account on foreign correspondents during the Spanish Civil War. These individuals were the main frame of reference for the American people to learn about the political situation in Spain and about the violent events that it incited. The Spanish Civil War managed to mobilize and politicize many intellectuals and cultural figures in the United States as the essays in Facing Fascism showed. This is certainly surprising in a domestic situation in which the American government strongly opposed any form of intervention and in which most Americans did not show an active interest in foreign policy. Why did these individuals sympathize so strongly with this civil war which was taking place 4,730 miles away from them and which did not directly seem to concern the United States and why did they feel the responsibility to become actively involved in it by using their own cultural profession?
In order to discover their motivations, we must understand why the Spanish Civil War drew international attention in the first place and why it triggered military involvement from third countries. The first chapter will take a closer look at the political urgencies that the Spanish Civil War pushed forward. It will give an overview of the origins of the conflict and it will aim to put it in a broader historical and international context. Although many countries became militarily, financially, or politically involved in the Spanish Civil War, the United States did the opposite and stayed the course of firm isolationism. This chapter will delve into the United States’ response to the Spanish Civil War. It will demonstrate how the United States government chose to keep the Spanish struggle at arm’s length. However, this was not true for all American citizens. Therefore this chapter will also demonstrate the private and public preoccupation with the Spanish Civil War within the American context. After coming to an understanding of the Spanish conflict and the reaction that it evoked in the United States, the second chapter will focus on the place that the war took in the field of culture. This chapter will be divided into subchapters concentrating on the various art forms that American cultural figures and institutions chose to become actively involved in the Spanish Civil War in both their professional and personal endeavors. Its aim is to shed light on the actual place that the events in Spain filled in the lives of these individuals. It will explore why it motivated them to become politically active and how they influenced a larger political movement. This chapter will include representatives from the fields of literature, visual arts, (photo)
journalism, the performing arts, and film. In order to investigate this cultural movement it will look at magazine and newspaper articles, films, plays, documentaries, and art exhibitions from the Spanish Civil War years. Secondary sources will consist of biographies of cultural figures and scholarship from cultural historians.
1. The American Political Reaction to the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War started in July 1936 when three generals including Francisco Franco organized a military Coup against the newly elected government, claiming that the elections had been invalid. The government was mostly supported by Frente Popular parties existing of socialists, liberal democrats, communists, and anarchists. The Coup was not immediately successful, therefore a Civil War followed until April 1939 when General Franco took Madrid shortly followed by the rest of Spain, leaving the Spanish Republicans no other option but to surrender. Franco was backed by the Catholic Church, the military, and the Spanish aristocracy. Scholars usually refer to his fascist forces as either Nationalists, Insurgents, or Rebels. On the other side of the conflict, those faithful to the elected government fighting for the perpetuation of the Second Spanish Republic are known as Republicans or Loyalists. Their Spanish Republican Cause that many people chose to support internationally is often described as ‘the Cause’ or la causa in Spanish.
The Spanish Civil War was an interesting conflict internationally, because it took place in a tense and divided Europe, reflecting both a clash of political ideologies and a shift in political power. The grips on democracy in Spain were challenged and crushed while other countries were either promoting their own political interests within the conflict or watching from the sidelines. In 1931 King Alfonso XIII had fled Spain after the Republican party that opposed the monarchy had won the elections and established the Second Spanish Republic, primarily consisting of socialist politicians. Rightwing Spaniards were used to holding all political power during earlier generations and felt threatened by the promises of change by the Second Spanish Republic. While still dominating the economy and the country’s social order, they also still controlled the press, the banks, the Church, and the armed forces. To feed their own propaganda, the Nationalists claimed to fight for “the cause of Christianity, order, and Western civilization against ‘Asiatic Communism.’”10 They fed the press with the horrors that were supposedly taking place in the Second Spanish Republic, such as the continuous slaughtering of priests, raping and killing of nuns, and iconoclastic activities such as the demolition of churches.11 The country grew divided in an increasingly tense environment between the Left and the Right. Due to abundant use of propaganda by both sides of the political spectrum and skyrocketing conspiracy theories, Spain’s population polarized even
10 Antony Beever, The Battle for Spain (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), 239. 11 Ibidem, 241.
further and the Left soon became synonymous for communist revolutionaries whereas the Right became fully interchangeable with fascism.
Although the Spanish Civil War was inherently a domestic conflict that was about to determine the political future of Spain, other countries quickly became involved, because they recognized the conflict as a struggle between fundamental ideologies. Since these exploded tensions in Spain mirrored the political domestic situation of many other countries, Spain’s internal conflict quickly spread beyond the Spanish borders fueling international responses. The Soviet Union and Mexico actively supported the Spanish Republican Army, whereas Europe’s fascist countries Nazi-Germany, Portugal, and Italy and were backing Franco’s Nationalists. Still recovering from the massive destruction that World War I had brought upon Europe, most countries did not want to get involved, despite of seeing the political urgency of the conflict. Although England and France also became involved in the Spanish Civil War to an extent, nowhere near as much as the Soviet Union did. It sent 2000 individuals to join the troops of the Spanish Republican Government and also sent weapons, food provisions, and medical supplies. Furthermore, the Soviet Union was the main organizer of the International Brigades, which also included many Americans volunteers.12
The Catholic Church was very outspoken in its support to Franco’s Nationalists with the Pope even declaring the Nationalist Catholics who had fallen victim to the Republicans as martyrs of the faith. Several high level Catholics made forceful statements regarding the conflict. The Bishop of Segovia claimed it was “a hundred times more important and holy than the Reconquista,” where the Bishop of Pamplona kicked it up a notch stating it was the “loftiest crusade that the centuries have ever seen … a crusade in which divine intervention on our side is evident.”13 In the United States the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn’s nationwide publication The Brooklyn Tablet declared the Spanish Second Republic to be “a villainous anti-Catholic Movement.”14
The Spanish Civil War and the United States Government
The political context of the United States during the Spanish conflict was predominantly shaped by isolationism. Emily S. Rosenberg, historian of International Relations, pointed out
12 Christian Leitz and David J. Dunthorn, Spain in an International Context, 1936-1959 (New York: Berghahn
Books, 1999), 81.
13 Antony Beever, The Battle for Spain (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), 241.
14 Patrick J. McNamara, “Pro-Franco Sentiment and Activity in New York City,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, ed. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 96.
how Americans grew an interest in international affairs towards the end of the 1920s. This interest was mostly fueled by liberal ideals of world peace and interconnectedness.15 With the lessons learnt from World War I in mind, this raised a debate about the definition of ‘internationalism.’ On the one hand there was an interpretation of a need for supranational institutions that would safeguard peace and Western democratic values. On the other hand there was a voice explaining the achievement of this goal through complete ‘non-intervention’ and a focus on domestic political stability. Rosenberg explained how this debate grew into a divide between ‘internationalism’ of which Woodrow Wilson had been the most famous advocate, and isolationism that became exceedingly dominant in the years following the Great Depression. The 1920s saw a succession of Republican administrations steering a course of detachment from international politics. However, there was space for independent parties to be involved with international issues. Private groups with an academic background or peace organizations would cultivate diplomatic contacts with foreign governments although this was not exactly legal, technically violating the Logan Act of 1799 that prohibited citizens from being involved in diplomatic actions.16
Some of the larger private institutions that carried out diplomatic actions were the Red Cross and Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration that later turned into the European Relief Council, striving for political stability and food distribution. These organizations received “special government blessing” for providing international relief, which was a foreign policy priority, without the government having to become directly involved. In this way, the United States established a strong tradition of foreign policy carried out by private philanthropic parties.17 The 1920s generally saw a growth in organized private foundations and philanthropic efforts.
Most de facto diplomatic efforts were provoked by economic arguments. Economic influence in the world would simultaneously result in an international appreciation for American ideals and a friendship with other countries based on values of peace and trust. However, World War I had greatly impoverished Europe, which complicated America’s diplomatic strategy. Furthermore, isolationism grew stronger during the Depression Era, when internationally active private foundations were also drastically affected by the economic
15 Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 113.
16 Ibidem, 115-116. 17 Ibidem, 117.
situation and could not maintain their healthy international economic situation. The 1930s were defined by a strong focus on culture and the economy as domestic issues.18
Foreign economic policy became more an issue of government regulation during the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who started his first term in 1933.
During the period between 1935 and 1939 the American government passed several Neutrality Acts that would support an isolationist approach concerning the unsettled international political situation. With the status of government regulation historically being an extremely controversial issue in the United States it evoked a new debate. Rosenberg explained how Roosevelt positioned himself during this struggle between nationalist and internationalist tactics: he would mostly try to maneuver between the two, without empathically choosing the one over the other. This sometimes led to contradictory policy implementations.19
Claude G. Bowers, who was the United States Ambassador to Spain from 1933 to 1939, published a book about his experiences with the title My Mission to Spain: Watching the Rehearsal for World War II after his retirement in 1954. This analogy between the Spanish Civil War and a direct prelude to World War II is a popular one, popping up in most of the academic literature. Aside from Bowers’ subjective accounts of the polarized political climate in Spain and his countless travel stories and anecdotes about Spanish cities and their people, this memoir also includes Bowers’ observations of war developments and of the large and small interventions of many other powerful countries such as France, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union, showing how these countries all actively influenced the Spanish internal conflict. Bowers’ recital of his own role as the United States Ambassador in the Spanish conflict, as determined by the American government has a very bitter undertone, explicitly placing his own forced detachment from the situation in contrast with the active engagement of many other countries. There speaks much frustration from Bowers’ memoir showing his fruitless efforts to get his government to understand that involvement would be the desired action.20 During the evacuation of wounded American members of the International Brigades
into France, Bowers proved himself especially helpful after Ernest Hemingway pressured him to assist.21
18 Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 203.
19 Ibidem, 172-173.
20 Claude Gernade Bowers, My Mission to Spain: Watching the Rehearsal for World War II (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1954).
21 Brewster S. Chamberlin, The Hemingway Log: a Chronology of his Life and Times (Lawrence: University
Scholars have written extensively about President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s foreign policy. After the conclusion of World War I the United States had renounced the diplomatic opportunity to become involved with the League of Nations. This decision had put into effect the predominant course of isolationism that defined the United States’ foreign policy throughout the interwar period. The United States finally abandoned this approach wholeheartedly with the events that World War II presented. The shift from isolationism to the country’s active involvement in a major global conflict occurred during the presidency of Roosevelt. This development evidently raised a multitude of scholarly debates concerning Roosevelt’s personal and professional stance towards foreign policy, on the position of the United States within the world’s balance of power, and on the circumstances and incidents that enabled the United States to shift its course regarding foreign policy.
Scholarship about Roosevelt’s dealings with the Spanish Civil War predominantly revolves around the Neutrality Act of 1937. Historian Justus D. Doenecke, who devoted his career to United States foreign policy in the 1930s and early 40s, isolationism, and American intervention, described Roosevelt’s concern with this particular example of legislation to be “the greatest political crisis of his entire political life.”22 The Third Neutrality Act was an update of earlier acts that had been passed in 1935 and 1936 born out of sentiments that had already been strong before the Spanish conflict emerged. These laws had been composed to safeguard American neutrality but they did include a loophole for civil wars. This grew into an issue when more countries became entangled in the Spanish Civil War. Under the Second Neutrality Act Franco was able to buy an extensive amount of war related goods from United States suppliers. The Third Neutrality Act of 1937 was drafted to prevent this from happening in the future and also included an explicit prohibition for American people to travel to belligerent countries, including those countries that were caught up in a civil war. Congress felt the need for such measurements in order to prevent a repetition of circumstances that had evoked the United States to become involved in World War I two decennia earlier.23
Over the course of the Spanish Civil War, President Roosevelt and the State Department attempted several times to put the issue of American neutrality back on the table, hoping that Congress would sway, but to no avail. Furthermore, American anti-interventionists were highly critical of the foreign policy approaches of both France and
22 Justus D. Doenecke, “The Roosevelt Foreign Policy: An Ambiguous Legacy,” in Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies: 1933-1945, eds. Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 22.
England concerning the Spanish Civil War and of the countries lending money directly to Hitler and hereby funding the creation of a strong German army.24
Several interest groups were trying to persuade Roosevelt, and therefore the American government to take into account their leading motives. While Congress was predominantly concerned with maintaining American neutrality by aiming to prevent American companies and individuals to have contact of any kind with either the Spanish Rebels or the Spanish Republicans, Norman Thomas, who led the Socialist Party of America, urged Roosevelt to consider the precarious situation of the Spanish government. He expressed his concern with the Neutrality Act in a letter to Roosevelt by addressing “the possibly disastrous effect of your action in disarming the Spanish Government in the face of well armed and ruthless armies.”25 Roosevelt resolutely answered Thomas by stating that benefiting one party over the other “would be dangerous to the extreme:”
Not only would we, by permitting unchecked the flow of arms to one party in the conflict, be involving ourselves directly in that European strife from which our people desire so deeply to remain aloof, but we would be deliberately encouraging those nations which would be glad of this pretext to continue their assistance to the one side or the other in Spain and aggravating those disagreements among the European nations which are a constant menace to the peace of the world.26
According to Doenecke however, Roosevelt would have vetoed the act, which had been passed by the strongly isolationist orientated Congress, but he could not afford to make more political enemies and loose votes for the upcoming reelection. Roosevelt’s biographer Frank Freidel also pointed out Roosevelt’s reluctance to challenge Congress and the American people, and most importantly to go against his powerful Catholic supporters. Freidel quoted Harold Ickes, United States Secretary of the Interior, who had pressured Roosevelt unsuccessfully to benefit the Loyalists by rethinking the Neutrality Act:
Finally the President told me that he had discussed the matter with Congressional leaders that morning… He said frankly that to raise the embargo would mean the loss of every Catholic vote next fall and that the Democratic Members of Congress were jittery about it and didn’t want it done.27
24 Justus D. Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention (Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), 194-195.
25 Justus D. Doenecke, “The Roosevelt Foreign Policy: An Ambiguous Legacy,” in Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies: 1933-1945, eds. Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 23.
26 Ibidem, 23.
27 Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (New York: Back Bay Books, 2009), chap.
Although the act passed Congress almost unanimously and the President had been less than enthusiastic about it, the issue was not picked up by the press.28
Another argument for not actively supporting the Spanish government was linked to Roosevelt’s recently rolled out Good Neighbor policy that meant to develop a relationship of friendship and non-intervention with Latin American countries in order to cultivate economic ties between the regions. The Latin American countries largely supported Franco’s rebel forces. However, Mexico did send supplies to the Spanish government.29
According to American historian Robert Dallek Roosevelt was strongly concerned with the effectiveness of the competing systems in the world of Democracy, Fascism, and Communism. This question was very dear to his heart after visiting countries in Latin America that had stopped fighting for their freedom and had given up on a democratic government.30 Roosevelt clarified his views in his Renomination Speech on July 27 1936 at the Democratic National Convention:
I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.31
Around the same time, Roosevelt expressed his general concern about world affairs in a letter to the US ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, stating, “democracy is verily on trial.”32 Historians have pointed out time and time again how Roosevelt’s personal conviction regarding the Spanish Civil War and its political importance may have differed from his administration’s policy concerning the conflict, but they have also analyzed the elements of action, consequences, and timing within the neutrality course that the United States was steering. Justus D. Doenecke, who described Roosevelt’s “failure to aid the Spanish Republic” as “shortsighted,” argued that the conflict and the United States’ neutrality policies only became a matter of public interest in 1938 when it was already too late for a hypothetical
28 Justus D. Doenecke, “The Roosevelt Foreign Policy: An Ambiguous Legacy,” in Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies: 1933-1945, eds. Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 23.
29 Andreu Espasa, “‘Suppose They Were to Do It in Mexico’: The Spanish Embargo and Its Influence on
Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy,” The International History Review, no. 4, vol 40 (2018), 774–791.
30 Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995), 136-137.
31 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Acceptance of Nomination for Second Term” (speech, Philadelphia, June 27, 1936),
Teaching American History, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/acceptance-of-nomination-for-second-term/, accessed, June 13 2019.
32 Dominic Tierney, FDR and the Spanish Civil War: Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle that Divided America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 28.
American intervention to make a true impact.33 Franco already had a decisive advantage at that time, controlling most of the Spanish territory including the seas. A few months before the capitulation of the Spanish Republicans, Roosevelt spoke out about the arms embargo that had been enforced by the Neutrality Act of 1937 as “a great mistake.” Instead, Roosevelt would have preferred to be able to support the Spanish Republicans in their fight for democracy by at least allowing the Spanish government to import weapons and other supplies from the United States by their own means.34 Although Roosevelt could eventually not be
persuaded to abandon his policy of isolationism and neutrality, he did recognize the conflict in Spain as a possible disaster with radical consequences for the world’s balance of power. He feared that an escalation of the Civil War would evoke an international European war. With his neutrality approach he hoped to forestall the escalation of the conflict.35
The American Institute of Public Opinion conducted polls that showed that only 11% of the American people considered foreign policy matters to be their most pressing problem in the Fall of 1935, some months before the conflict in Spain started. Compared to the years that came after, this percentage was rather low. Americans were much more preoccupied with internal matters and mostly only had an opinion about foreign affairs in regard to safeguarding American neutrality. In the first two years of the Spanish Civil War this percentage had more than doubled. People became much more preoccupied with the role of the United States in international issues. This concern predominantly encompassed the wish to avoid the involvement of the United States in international warfare.36
On October 5, 1937, Roosevelt gave a speech in Chicago in which he discussed the complications of the Neutrality Acts within the currently tense political situation. In this speech, which received a vast amount of criticism, he referred to the anti-interventionist sentiments that continued to dominate public opinion. Roosevelt argued that staying completely neutral within a conflictual global situation would not suffice in keeping the United States away from war. Calling upon the morality of his nation, Roosevelt appealed for a different outlook on foreign affairs. Painting a bleak picture of the current international political situation, emphasizing the needless suffering of women and children by barbaric acts inflicted by 10% of the world’s population, Roosevelt aimed to influence his listeners. He
33 Justus D. Doenecke, “The Roosevelt Foreign Policy: An Ambiguous Legacy,” in Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies: 1933-1945, eds. Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 88.
34 Ibidem, 24-25.
35 Michael L. Kurtz, The Challenging of America: 1920-1945 (Arlington Heights: The Forum Press, Inc., 1986),
129.
36 Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers,
stressed the urgency of the situation by stating: “It has now reached the stage where the very foundation of civilization are (sic) seriously threatened. The landmarks, the traditions which have marked the progress of civilization toward a condition of law and order and justice are being wiped away.”37 Roosevelt also emphasized the unfeasibility of isolationism in the modern world with a growingly internationally interdependent economy.
Roosevelt did not offer any specific examples of what the United States was supposed to do about this untenable situation in terms of direct action, but he did explicitly disclose that it was the moral obligation of the international community to “put an end to acts of international aggression.”38 Roosevelt primarily pressed for an open attitude towards diplomatic options by stating once more that isolation would not rescue the United States from being dragged into the world’s tumultuous state:
The peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort in opposition to those violations of treaties and those ignorings of human instincts which today are creating a state of international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape through mere isolation or neutrality.39
This speech, which became known as Roosevelt’s Quarantine Speech, because of its adopted narrative filled with metaphors such as “spreading disease”, “epidemic”, and “quarantine”, received criticism from opposing politicians and some newspaper articles. These critics were especially condemning the speech as they read an attempt into it of an intended rapprochement to France and England within a conflict that did not directly concern the United States.40
Spanish historian Enrique Moradiellos has described the situation in Spain as “a mini European civil war” because of the involvement of foreign volunteers from various (European) countries through the International Brigades.41 This direct involvement of individuals in the heat of battle incited foreign press to cover the Civil War as a conflict between ideologies, rather than as an internal Spanish struggle. Depending on the adopted point of view, the Spanish Civil War became charged with being either a battle between democracy and fascism, or conversely it was conceived as a struggle between communism
37 Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Quarantine" (speech, Chicago, October 5, 1937) AMDOCS: Documents for the Study
of American History, http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/texts/fdrquarn.html, accessed August 8, 2018.
38 Ibidem. 39 Ibidem.
40 Justus D. Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention (Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), 51.
41 Christian Leitz and David J. Dunthorn, Spain in an International Context, 1936-1959 (New York: Berghahn
and the West.42 In spite of the negativity that the Quarantine Speech did provoke, the public reaction was generally positive and supportive.43
Scholars have taken a particular interest into the contrast between FDR’s personal convictions regarding the Spanish Civil War and the seemingly steady course of non-intervention that the United States Government was clearly steering throughout the 1930s. The specific event that triggered scholarly speculation was Roosevelt’s alleged involvement in the secret plan in 1938 to ship 150 planes to the Spanish Loyalists through France lead by Eleanor’s brother, Gracie Hall Roosevelt, hereby directly bypassing the recently adopted Neutrality Act of 1937. This covert aid plan was never implemented, due to France’s unwillingness to support the scheme. Several scholars have addressed the covert aid plot, coming up with differing interpretations of the involved individuals, due to the lack of evidence. Political scientist Dominic Tierney claimed that Roosevelt could certainly be linked to the covert aid plan based on evidence found in various archives, including the recently opened Russian archives. He interpreted Roosevelt’s involvement as a sign that the President was siding with the Spanish Republicans and that he was already looking for ways to deviate from the isolationist traditions.44 Scholars have assessed Roosevelt’s policies as highly controversial during his terms as President, but also continue these controversies into their own research. To understand and evaluate a leader and his choices depends heavily upon the focus of the particular research and the political angle that the researcher is taking.
The Spanish Civil War as a bone of contention in American Society
Meanwhile, American Catholics were mobilizing themselves in favor of Franco’s fascist forces very successfully. Spaniard Luis Bolín, who was working abroad as a lobbyist for the Nationalists before and during the Spanish Civil War, claimed that the White House had received at least one million telegrams from American priests urging Roosevelt to sharpen the Neutrality Act, making it illegal for the Second Republic to buy arms from US suppliers.45 J.
Edgar Hoover biographer Richard Gid Powers had defined the American Roman Catholic
42 Christian Leitz and David J. Dunthorn, Spain in an International Context, 1936-1959 (New York: Berghahn
Books, 1999), 48.
43 Mark A. Stoler, “The Roosevelt Foreign Policy: Flawed, but Superior to the Competition,” in Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies: 1933-1945, eds. Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 126.
44 Dominic Tierney, "Franklin D. Roosevelt and Covert Aid to the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War,
1936-39" Journal of Contemporary History, no. 3, vol 39 (2004).
Church as the backbone of American anticommunism ever since the movement was born.46 Editor Father Francis Xavier Talbot published in America, his Jesuit magazine, how “collaboration with Fascism is possible for the Catholic Church; a collaboration with Communism is absolutely impossible for the Catholic Church.”47 He also predicted that the Spanish Republic “would not stop until the whole of Spain were Sovietized.”48 Most influentially, Vatican City had been one of the first states to give Francoist Spain official recognition. In 1937 they even enabled them to exhibit at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris using the Vatican flag.49 Although American Catholics actively supported General Franco within the United States, there are no sources stating that any Americans actually went to Spain to join Franco’s Rebels as volunteers.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Spanish Republican Army found particular support from American communists. Representatives of the Communist Party recruited enthusiastic and idealistic Americans to join the International Brigade. In a very short time, the communist recruiters had sent over 2000 Americans to Spain to assist the Republican Cause. More than half of these men and women were from New York City and strongly identified with antifascist and communist ideals.50 The troops called themselves the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, reminiscent of the United States’ own Civil War in which Lincoln had represented the democratically elected government, similar to what these people were hoping to defend for Spain. A second wave of volunteers formed the George Washington Battalion, referring to the War of Independence and the founding of American democracy. The State Department could not stop Americans from reaching Spain through France after they were shipped off from New York City’s ports, even though citizens were legally prohibited to set foot on Spanish soil while traveling with an American passport.51 Shortly after the formation of the Lincoln Brigades, traveling Americans were even obliged to provide an affidavit stating that they would not visit Spain.52 The arriving Americans in Barcelona stated that they had come to “fight for their principles.”53 Since joining a foreign army was strictly illegal, the
46 Patrick J. McNamara, “Pro-Franco Sentiment and Activity in New York City,” in Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War, eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 95.
47 Ibidem, 96. 48 Ibidem, 96.
49 Antony Beever, The Battle for Spain (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), 224, 249.
50 John Gerassi, The Premature Antifascists: North American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1986), 23.
51 Peter N. Carroll, Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War (New York: New York University
Press, 2007) 14
52 Foster Jay Taylor, The United States and the Spanish Civil War (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956), 103. 53 Ibidem, 101.
State Department declared that joining the armed forces in Spain would be considered “unpatriotically inconsistent with the American Government’s policy” and it would be equivalent to taking “an oath of allegiance to a foreign government,” exiling oneself and losing the right to depend on the services of the United States government.54
The Abraham Lincoln Brigades consisted of a broad mix of volunteers: many recent immigrants from every country in Europe, students, and white-collar laborers. The New York progressive art scene was also represented among the troops, with several painters, poets and writers joining the International Brigade. These individuals had joined this international cause for a variety of reasons, ranging from religious beliefs to political and social convictions, but also out of mere curiosity. The first Americans to join the Loyalist Cause through France arrived to Barcelona in January 1937. The American volunteers came late to the game within the International Brigades, as most Western European countries and some Eastern European countries already had volunteers join the Spanish Republican Cause back in 1936, as Americans had been able to read in The New York Times.55
Although not all American volunteers that joined the fight identified as communists, they were pressured with communist propaganda once in Spain. The anti-fascist message that the Popular Front carried out to the volunteers in Spain was most effective in creating a sensation of unity among the Republican army and their international volunteers.56 Although the American government had done everything in their power to prevent American citizens from joining the war, a large number of people completely disregarded these legal hurdles while being aware that there must be consequences to their actions. During the third winter of the Spanish Civil War, in 1938, the Spanish Republican government decided to disengage the International Brigades in a fruitless attempt to persuade Franco’s Nationalists to take similar steps and also dismiss the substantial support from both Mussolini and Hitler. Therefore, the Spanish conflict came to an abrupt and premature end for the international volunteers, having to leave Spain without being able to carry on with the war until its conclusion. Since most of the volunteers had joined the foreign army illegally, they were forced into exile, as they had no home country to which they could easily return.57
The Spanish Civil War came to an end on April 1, 1939 when the Republican Army surrendered. On that same day the United States formally recognized Francoist Spain, without
54 Foster Jay Taylor, The United States and the Spanish Civil War (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956), 102. 55 Verle B. Johnston, Legions of Babel: The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War (Philadelphia: The
Pennsylvania University Press, 1967), 29.
56 Ibidem, 95.
ever making any formal statement of support before to any of the two battling sides until the conflict had completely finished.
This chapter has shown why this unflinching course of neutrality and non-interventionism was not necessarily the most logical trajectory to staying out of war. The argument that the Spanish Civil War was only a preamble to the next Great War was not simply invented with the knowledge of hindsight, but it was widely carried during the late 1930s when the Spanish Civil War was quickly turned into an international battle between ideologies fueled with pertinacious propaganda and paranoia on both sides inducing several countries to become militarily involved. This chapter has shown how the United States government’s only answer to the conflict came in the form of a succession of Neutrality Acts, although the President may have preferred personally to handle the conflict differently.
2. The American Cultural Response to the Spanish Civil War
“When the world community cannot act, global issues become personal choices,” wrote Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos in their biography of the widely successful photojournalistic duo Robert Capa and Gerda Taro.58 Both photographers covered the Spanish Civil War and their work was featured by American media. Robert Capa even started the process of becoming a naturalized American citizen right after he left Spain. Capa’s iconic photograph The Falling Soldier (1936) was published in major magazines and newspapers around the world such as Life, allegedly embodying a Loyalist militiaman at the exact moment when the man was shot and killed at the battle of Cerro Muriano. This picture, that shot Capa into stardom, has been the subject of major debate from the 1970s onwards with critics questioning its authenticity. Capa always denied claims of staging the picture stating: “no tricks are necessary to take pictures in Spain. You don’t have to pose your camera (i.e., pose your subjects). The pictures are there, and you just take them. The truth is the best picture. The best propaganda.”59 By 1938 Capa was world famous and was considered “the greatest war photographer in the world.”60 Both Capa and Taro put themselves at grave risk capturing the Spanish conflict with their Leicas. For Taro it even became her death when she received a fatal injury while covering a Republican loss in the summer of 1938. Capa and Taro were part of a large international group of people that were completely gripped by the Spanish Civil War and its ideological implications. They decided to put their photography occupation to good use and bring the realities of the conflict to as many homes as possible on both sides of the Atlantic. Capa and Taro befriended and collaborated with several American intellectual figures such as Ernest Hemingway, and Life editor John Morris. They felt the need to travel to the source of the action to personally make a change when the international community was negligent about the conflict.
The previous chapter showed how ‘the world community,’ and more specifically the United States, did not act in favor of the Spanish Republican government. Without the substantial support of both Mussolini and Hitler to Franco, the outcome of the Spanish Civil War might have been drastically different and their involvement had dragged the Spanish conflict into the international sphere. Chapter 1has also shown how the United States came to
58 Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos, Eyes of the World: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and the Invention of Modern Photojournalism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2017), 249.
59 Richard Whelan, Robert Capa: Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1985) 97.
60 “The Falling Soldier, 1936, printed later,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed May 3, 2019,
a policy of steady isolationism, claiming this was in accordance with public opinion in the mid 1930s. Previous scholarship surrounding the role of the United States’ (or lack thereof) within the Spanish Civil War usually revolved around this narrative of neutrality and non-interventionism by President Roosevelt’s administration. Some scholars have addressed the role of public opinion regarding the Spanish Civil War in relation to the policy of isolationism, often pointing out the aspect of American Catholics. However, they have failed to acknowledge the influential part of American society that actively sided with the Spanish Republicans, apart from the Abraham Lincoln Brigades. Traveling to Spain illegally, taking up arms to save a foreign Republic, making do with the consequences that such actions might entail, is certainly the most remarkable example of American engagement with the Spanish Civil War, but it is far from the only one. Many Americans that remained at home also found a way to get involved. Many Spanish immigrants, socialists, communists, and other active anti-fascists organized themselves in the urban areas of the United States to speak up against Franco.
Interestingly, the Spanish Civil War did manage to arouse a very strong sentimental response amongst many prominent intellectuals and artists. They considered the war of the Spanish Republic as a war against fascism and a fight for democracy. Therefore, the stakes of this war reached much further than the borders of the Iberian Peninsula and many individuals felt urged to commit to the Spanish Republican Cause and do whatever was in their power to tip the scales in the Loyalist favor. Many of the prominent Americans invested in the Spanish conflict were working in the creative and cultural sector. This chapter will zoom in on the most prominent cultural individuals, exploring how they dealt with the Spanish Civil War from a professional and personal viewpoint. It will examine if and how they have aimed to influence public opinion in the United States and their government’s policies towards Spain. The chapter will focus both on individuals that left the United States to be present at the heat of battle and on those that stayed and joined the Cause at home. It will explore how these people influenced a larger political movement. The chapter will make a distinction between the art forms, starting with journalism and the writer professionals, moving on to documentary filmmaking and Hollywood, the Performing Arts, and finally, it will look at the response that the Spanish Civil War evoked in the modern art scene.
Although the legal hurdles had made it nearly impossible for Americans to travel to Spain during the conflict years, there was still a large number of them moved by morbid curiosity or idealistic inspiration that found a way to personally be present in Spain. Apart from the individuals that had joined the Lincoln Battalion, there were also intellectuals and
