Arguing Americanism: Franco Lobbyists, Roosevelt's Foreign Policy, and the Spanish Civil War

Michael E. Chapman. Arguing Americanism: Franco Lobbyists, Roosevelt's Foreign Policy and the Spanish Civil War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2011. Pp. xxii. 315. US$60On 29 November 1939...

Book Review| January 01 2011 The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain. Pierre Broué and Emile Témime. William A. Pelz William A. Pelz Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal for the Study of Radicalism (2011) 5 (1): 135–137. https://doi.org/10.2307/41889951 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation William A. Pelz; The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain. Journal for the Study of Radicalism 1 January 2011; 5 (1): 135–137. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41889951 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressJournal for the Study of Radicalism Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2011 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Journal Article Raymond Carr, editor. The Republic and the Civil War in Spain. (Problems in Focus Series.) [New York:] St. Martin's Press. 1971. Pp. x, 275. $10.00 and Pierre Broué and Emile Témime. The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain. Translated by Tony White Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1972. Pp. 590. $12.50 Get access Carr Raymond, editor. The Republic and the Civil War in Spain. (Problems in Focus Series.) [New York:] St. Martin's Press. 1971. Pp. x, 275. $10.00. Broué Pierre and Témime Emile. The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain. Translated by White Tony. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1972. Pp. 590. $12.50. Temma Kaplan Temma Kaplan University of California, Los Angeles Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 79, Issue 4, October 1974, Pages 1198–1199, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/79.4.1198 Published: 01 October 1974

Presidential Power, the Panay Incident, and the Defeat of the Ludlow Amendment

Reviewed by: Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War by Miriam M. Basilio Yves Laberge Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War. Miriam M. Basilio. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. Pp. xvi + 304. $119.95 (cloth). In her first monograph (possibly a derivate from her doctoral dissertation from 2002), Professor Miriam M. Basilio from New York University positions her interdisciplinary research into three salient trajectories related to Spanish history: the visual culture and political propaganda; the politicized posters from the 1930s; and the memory of the 1936–39 civil war in Spain. These intertwined topics are not totally new if considered individually, but there are relatively few books in English that have centered these perspectives upon visual history in an effort to understand the dynamics and redefinitions of the nation in its transition into fascism. Incidentally, some portions of this substantial book have already appeared elsewhere, mainly in scholarly journals (cited on xvi, 276). Although this book primarily covers the years 1936–1940, especially in her last chapter Basilio also studies many recent retellings of the era. That time period marks the early days of modern propaganda, corresponding to the darkest strategies of public outreach practiced by Germany’s Nazi regime. Basilio’s main point is to conceptualize the Spanish Civil War through contemporary theoretical approaches, centered on citizenship, national identity, memory studies, and the public sphere (in the Habermasian sense): “I argue that rival political factions within the Republican and nationalist camps placed questions of national identity and historical memory at the forefront of visual-propaganda campaigns and exhibitions” (1). Despite the complexity of this situation, her methodological approach is nuanced, considering the various trends and influences of this era: Catholicism, the heritage of Spanish colonialism, and the sentiment of national pride (208). In her impressive corpus, Basilio has chosen a wide array of vintage images, posters, cartoons, and various advertisements, either pro or against the advent of a new republic in Spain. Most of these forgotten images are reproduced here in black and white, with a few exceptions in color. The author studies how various exhibitions of these images have been conceptualized, conceived, and perceived by audiences, as in the unforgettable Paris World Fair of 1937, for example, when “the Spanish republican government presented a remarkable modernist pavilion,” which included Pablo Picasso’s latest masterpiece Guernica (174). The analysis is broadly conceptualized into several theoretical frameworks, for example in Basilio’s study of masculinity in some sketches of the Spanish military junta (29). The number of combatants involved was impressive then: as tangible proof of these vast propaganda efforts, “the junta issued approximately 40 posters, many reproduced as postcards in editions up to 50,000” (29). This book comes into five chapters, highlighting the social construction of the imagined nation of Spain (Chapter 1); observing how art, museums, and world fairs were used as vehicles for propaganda (Chapter 2); analyzing how the new nation was redefined (Chapter 3); showing how roots and patrimony were recuperated (Chapter 4); and finally asking how the persistent memory of civil war can be revisited and represented in the twenty-first century (Chapter 5). As she attempts to address these complex questions, Basilio admits that she cannot provide answers to all of them: after so many decades, it is now almost impossible to know exactly how individual citizens really reacted to these propaganda campaigns and exhibitions—whether they adhered to or resisted them—in the early days of the Spanish Civil War (2). As such, Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War is not just a book about Catalan history. Chapter 5 concludes with questions about how these events are represented by contemporary Spanish artists in the twenty-first century and raises some issues related to memory [End Page 1049] (what we retain from the past), amnesia (what is forgotten or what remains undiscussed), and human rights (especially how citizens were manipulated by political propaganda and effectively forced into a dictatorship) in the context of images from artists such as Fernando Bryce (232–33). Recent images from Francesc Torres’s photography project, “Dark is the Room Where We Sleep,” such as a black-and-white photograph showing a hand...

The author explores responses to political violence through the materiality of three aspects of the Civil War in Spain: military lines in the battle for Madrid, a concentration camp in Extremadura and a remote settlement of forced labourers and their families. He shows how archaeology's revelations reflect, qualify and enrich the story of human survival under the pall cast by a dictatorship. Sharing the inquiry with the public of today also revealed some of the disquieting mechanisms by which history is composed and how archaeology can be used to deconstruct it.

The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The controversy that raged in America between partisans and adversaries of the country's participation in World War II was rendered more complex by the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi-Soviet Pact and attitudes within America to Nazi Germany. If Americans were united from 1941–1945, films made in the period 1938–1940 showed that anti-fascism brought together filmmakers of very different political opinions. Before discussing certain war films, this chapter describes an event that occurred in September 1941 whose repercussions were revelatory of the political climate in America and were to return, in an inverted form, once the war was over: the Senate Sub-Committee War Films Hearings. The Sub-Committee was created at the request of two senators, the Democrat Burton Wheeler and the Republican Gerald Nye, to investigate what they saw as blatant propaganda films put out by Hollywood to support Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy and create a situation where the American public would support America entering the war.

Journal Article The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain Get access The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain. By Pierre Broué and Emile Témime. Trans. by Tony White. London: Faber. 1972. 590 pp. Illus. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £6.00. W. Horsfall Carter W. Horsfall Carter Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 48, Issue 3, July 1972, Pages 502–503, https://doi.org/10.2307/2612757 Published: 01 July 1972

Journal Article The Republic and the Civil War in Spain Get access The Republic and the Civil War in Spain. Ed. By Raymond Carr. London, Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press. 1971. 275 pp. Index. (Problems in Focus series.) £3.90. Geoffrey Ribbans Geoffrey Ribbans Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 48, Issue 1, January 1972, Pages 127–128, https://doi.org/10.2307/2613669 Published: 01 January 1972

An examination of the image of the Russian purges in two of the main papers of the British left is of especial interest. The 1930s was an era of intense political involvement for the left. A state of latent class conflict existed in France and even Britain, conflict that erupted into open civil war in Spain during the years of the purges in the Soviet Union. The nazis in Germany menaced the values and heritage of the western Enlightenment and represented a disruptive force diplomatically, a threat to the whole balance of power in Europe. It is in this context that the position of Soviet Russia and international communism became extremely important. To many on the left, the Soviet Union appeared to be an essential counterweight to the military threat of nazi Germany, to be aiding the forces of progress in Spain and to be leading the Popular Front against fascism. Yet it was during the years 193638, the very years of the Civil War in Spain, of the Anschluss and of Munich, that the great terror in the Soviet Union erupted on an unprecedented scale, both in its tremendous scope and in the intensity of the macabre dramas at the Moscow court room. Two immediate problems faced the left in Britain in their reactions to the purges and the Moscow Treason Trials. There was the moral dilemma of recognizing and condoning or condemning injustice committed by an ally in the struggle against fascism. The spectacle of broken old revolutionaries publicly degraded was profoundly disturbing. There was also the problem of analysis and interpretation; what was the significance of the purges in Soviet history; were they a temporary or permanent phenomenon? For the left there were difficulties in reconciling the scope of Yezhovization terror with Bolshevik claims that they were implementing 'Marxism' in the Soviet

The article deals with the analysis of publications of British Fascists newspapers 'Action' and 'The Blackshirt' during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. The main directions of image of enemy formation are studied on the example of these papers. Forms of presentation and ways of international problems interpreting by far-right publications are studied. The fascist newspaper Action, The Fascist Week and The Blackshirt spoke from the position of nationalism, Imperial identity, anti-liberalism, anti-Soviet and anti-Semitism. The concept of "communism" in the pages of the fascist press has accumulated the most precisely the image of enemy. Articles and notes shaped confusion between "Soviet", "red" and "Communist". The USSR seemed to be "the warmonger" and the "architect of the Civil war in Spain". The destructive role of Soviet Russia in the conflict was proved in the British fascist press. Soviet Union was accused of seeking to plunge Spain and Europe into anarchy. In British fascist publications trend towards stereotyping and myth-making were noticeable, they were opposed to "Western" civilization (as individualistic) and "Eastern", "Communist" (oppressive, traditionalist).

Arguing Americanism: Franco Lobbyists, Roosevelt's Foreign Policy, and the Spanish Civil War

The struggle to define U.S. national identity through a political conflict in Spain “An unusually original book that challenges established assumptions and reveals the complexity of American reactions to the Spanish Civil War.”—Stanley G. Payne, University of Wisconsin-Madison In 1938 the United States was embroiled in a vicious debate between supporters of the two sides of the Spanish Civil War, who sought either to lift or to retain the U.S. arms embargo on Spain. The embargo, which favored Gen. Francisco Franco’s Nationalist regime over the ousted Republican government of the Loyalists, received heavy criticism for enabling a supposedly fascist-backed takeover during a time when the Nazi party in Germany was threatening the annexation of countries across Europe. Supporters of General Franco, however, saw the resistance of the Loyalists as being spurred on by the Soviet Union, which sought to establish a communist government abroad. Since World War II, American historians have traditionally sided with the Loyalist supporters, validating their arguments that the pro-Nationalists were un-American for backing an unpalatable dictator. In Arguing Americanism, author Michael E. Chapman examines the long-overlooked pro-Nationalist argument. Employing new archival sources, Chapman documents a small yet effective network of lobbyists—including engineer turned writer John Eoghan Kelly, publisher Ellery Sedgwick, homemaker Clare Dawes, muralist Hildreth Meière, and philanthropist Anne Morgan—who fought to promote General Franco’s Nationalist Spain and keep the embargo in place. Arguing Americanism also goes beyond the embargo debate to examine the underlying issues that gripped 1930s America. Chapman posits that the Spanish embargo argument was never really about Spain but rather about the soul of Americanism, the definition of democracy, and who should do the defining. Pro-Loyalists wanted the pure democracy of the ballot box; pro-Nationalists favored the checks and balances of indirect democracy. By pointing to what was happening in Spain, each side tried to defend its version of Americanism against the foreign forces that threatened it. For Franco supporters, it was the spread of international Marxism, toward which they felt Roosevelt and his New Deal were too sympathetic. The pro-Nationalists intensified an argument that became a precursor to a fundamental change in American national identity—a change that would usher in the Cold War era. Arguing Americanism will appeal to political scientists, cultural historians, and students of U.S. foreign relations.

IN JULY 1936, THE democratically elected republican government of Spain was plunged into civil war when General Francisco Franco, with massive aid from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, led an attempted coup d'etat.1 The republicans received aid from the Soviet Union and Mexico, but the Western democracies imposed an almost complete embargo on weapons and personnel. This was the context in which nearly 3000 Americans went against official US foreign policy and volunteered to fight on the side of the Spanish Republic, joining 35 000 other volunteers in a desperate and ultimately losing battle against the growing fascist menace.2 Among the US volunteers was Sidney Vogel, one of approximately 30 physician participants. Vogel was born April 28, 1904, in New York City. His father, an immigrant from Germany, was a physician. In 1927, Vogel received his medical degree from the University of Michigan and served an internship at Manhattan State Hospital, a psychiatric facility. In the 1930s, he practiced general medicine in New York City, at one point working for a large insurance company. Like many of his friends and family, he took progressive positions on the issues of the day, and like other idealistic physicians, he became caught up in the campaign led by the Medical Bureau of the Friends of Spanish Democracy to provide medical support to the republican forces.3–5 On May 29, 1937, Vogel arrived in Spain and was posted with the rank of captain to Murcia as director of the Casa Roja hospital. There he both supervised the work of the hospital and practiced surgery alongside his colleagues. As Franco's forces advanced, he was transferred to Mataro and other hospitals near Barcelona, always as director. Although the international brigades were withdrawn from combat in October 1938, medical staff members remained behind to supervise the transfer of the wounded out of Spain. In January 1939, Vogel left Spain for Paris and then New York, where he arrived in late February. Like many Spanish Civil War veterans, he volunteered again to fight fascism after Pearl Harbor, serving in the US Army's North African and Italian campaigns.6 As the only medical staff on his postings with any psychiatric experience, he was often assigned to care for shellshock victims and other disoriented patients. After the war, he used the GI Bill to retrain as a psychiatrist. He had a special interest in the then-novel fields of group therapy and alcoholism, topics on which he published several articles in the 1950s.7–9 He practiced psychiatry in New York City until his death on April 1, 1986. The document by Vogel printed here offers a contemporary first-hand description of medical practice during the Spanish Civil War. Previously unpublished, it was found in the American Lincoln Brigade Archives at New York University. Most likely dating from mid-1939, the manuscript's intended audience and publication venue are unknown. Because it is written in a popular rather than technical manner, it may have been meant to sensitize public opinion in preparation for the coming war.10 Throughout his text, Vogel emphasizes that organizational advances represent the main contribution made by medical staff in wartime. For example, this is the main significance of his vivid discussion of blood transfusion work during the Spanish Civil War. He expresses admiration for the system developed by Spanish personnel, but does not mention Norman Bethune, who subsequently received what now appears to be undeserved credit for these organizational innovations.11,12 Published accounts from the period by Spanish Civil War medical personnel can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In addition, Vogel is one of many Spanish Civil War volunteers whose participation has gone virtually unmentioned in the scholarly literature. Together, these factors make this article of special interest.

Elected an unprecedented four times to the presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt led the United States through some of the most dramatic and trying foreign and domestic episodes in its history. Coming to power in the throws of a crippling depression, Roosevelt quickly found himself having to juggle the need for tremendous domestic revitalization in a world menaced by burgeoning aggressor states. In Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt's Foreign Policies, noted historians Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler offer differing perspectives on the Roosevelt years, finding disparate meanings from common data. Finding Roosevelt astute at choosing the most effective option of those available, Stoler generally defends FDR's policies against their traditional critics. Conversely, Doenecke emphasizes a dangerous shallowness and superficiality in FDR's approach to foreign affairs, particularly in his first two terms. The contrary viewpoints of the authors, supplemented by carefully chosen documents, provide an ideal introduction allowing readers to examine the issues and draw their own conclusions about Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy.