Catholics, Neutrality, and the Spanish Embargo, 1937-1939

Abstract

THE election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 lifted the hearts of many Americans and gave them renewed hope that the desperate problems of the national depression might be resolved. Among the millions of American Catholics who labored painfully under the many crosses of the depression, only a minority lifted their eyes beyond the twin issues of employment and sustenance. For the others and for most non-Catholic Americans Latin American cagdillismo, Italian Fascism, and the rise of Nazi Germany prompted much less concern than domestic anxieties. Gradually the gross boldness and violence of the Fascists and the Nazis and Japanese depredations in China educated the American people to the reality of danger beyond their shores and rudely forced them to consider each new foreign crisis as a matter of concern to the United States. How the government should respond in the face of these problems was hardly clear, and seldom, if ever, did its course of action or reaction please the total electorate. Significant divisions began to appear in America as internationalists and isolationists increasingly and acrimoniously vied with each other to define true national self-interests in foreign policy. The summer of 1936 marked the beginning of one of the most bitter debates in American history, for the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War tore huge rents in the fabric of American society. The Roosevelt administration faced a genuine crisis. Regardless of his policy decision concerning Spain, Roosevelt could not help but exacerbate the differences already dividing Americans. Nevertheless, on January 6, 1937, the President requested congressional amendment of existing neutrality legislation to cope with the Spanish Civil War. By a vote of 81 to 0 in the Senate and 406 to 1 in the House, Congress quickly assented and placed an embargo on the shipment of war materiel to either side in the Spanish conflict. Later that year, on the basis of a new neutrality act, the President issued a proclamation applying