“The Model of a Model Fellow Traveler”: Harry F. Ward, the American League for Peace and Democracy, and the“Russian Question”in American Politics, 1933–1956

Abstract

The American League for Peace and Democracy (ALPD) was the foremost group representing Americans who worked for peace in the 1930s on the basis of antifascism rather than pacifism. It also was the most important organization within the antifascist, pro‐Soviet Popular Front of the Great Depression. But its story largely is absent in histories of the American peace movement. Harry F. Ward, a prominent clergyman and activist in leftliberal circles for decades, was the ALPD's chair from 1934 until its dissolution in 1940 following the Nazi–Soviet nonaggression pact. The story of the ALPD, and of Ward's political downfall at the hands of anticommunist colleagues, offers a window into the complexity of progressive politics during this tumultuous era and shows how liberals, radicals, and pacifists formed an anticommunist alliance prior to U.S. entry into World War II.