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Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front
From 1938 to 1942, a case of national jitters gripped the United States--fear that a German Fifth Column had penetrated the nation, and that Nazi spies were actively engaged in a campaign of subversion. Responsible voices in the White House, Congress, the intelligence community, and citizens organizations voiced genuine alarm at the internal threat. Spies were everywhere in the popular media--movies, radio shows, novels, pulp fiction, and comic books all contributed to the hysteria.
In INSIDIOUS FOES, author Francis MacDonnell recaptures the spirit of the anxiety and dread that permeated the country during these years. He examines factors that led to the rise and fall of the Fifth Column panic, and its manifestations in political and cultural life. While acknowledging that actual subversion by Axis powers was minimal and quickly eliminated, MacDonnell also outlines the significant legacy the scare produced--not only for World War II, but also for the postwar anticommunist period, and our own struggle with the threat of terrorism. Since much of the rhetoric used and measures taken against the presumed Nazi threat were carried over into anticommunist crusades of the Cold War, this episode clearly contributed to what has been described as the paranoid element in American politics.
In INSIDIOUS FOES, author Francis MacDonnell recaptures the spirit of the anxiety and dread that permeated the country during these years. He examines factors that led to the rise and fall of the Fifth Column panic, and its manifestations in political and cultural life. While acknowledging that actual subversion by Axis powers was minimal and quickly eliminated, MacDonnell also outlines the significant legacy the scare produced--not only for World War II, but also for the postwar anticommunist period, and our own struggle with the threat of terrorism. Since much of the rhetoric used and measures taken against the presumed Nazi threat were carried over into anticommunist crusades of the Cold War, this episode clearly contributed to what has been described as the paranoid element in American politics.
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 6, 2021
There's something superficial and naive in this narrative. The subject is promising and fascinating: the birth of fifth column hysteria in the late 30s, and 40s, but the ground covered here makes only the most superficial connections to the deeper trends in American history, all of which have surfaced during the Trump era: the long history of conspiracy theories and Hofstadter's Paranoid Style, anti-immigrant animus, anti-semitism and the calculated willingness of political leaders to stoke paranoia in order to reduce their opponents.
As a narrative of the facts, the book is fine. But as a disquisition that helps connect and understand the agency of the past in order to master the future, the book has almost no use. It fails as history.
As a narrative of the facts, the book is fine. But as a disquisition that helps connect and understand the agency of the past in order to master the future, the book has almost no use. It fails as history.
January 3, 2023
"We have met the enemy," prophesied Pogo, Walt Kelly's cartoon possum, "and he is us." The fears of enemies within, shared by rulers and ruled, has proven this proverb more than once. This book chronicles the forgotten witch hunt, when it was progressives and liberals who picked up the torches and raised the pitchforks between the Red Scare and Joe McCarthy.
Though Francis MacDonnell does not put the "Nazi scare" into the long context of American social paranoia (the Mormons, immigrants, Catholics, anarchists, and other bugaboos) he does an overall fine job of exploring its ramifications in the fascist era in its paranoia over the "Fifth Column." The term itself is an era artifact that has lodged permanently in political discourse, referring to the Spanish Civil War and General Mola's hope of an internal, subversive force to match his four insurgent columns marching on Republican, anti-fascist Madrid.
Its most egregious action was the internment of Japanese-Americans, though other "Axis agents" (like Joe DiMaggio's Italian-born father) suffered in the backlash. This was of course a reification of the anti-German war scare of WW I and its sweeping Espionage Act, prefiguring totalitarianism before the term was coined. I do think a more intensive and detailed treatment would have improved the story; but since few have really examined the issue, as it was swallowed by the later Red Scare, as was the WW I hysteria before it, MacDonnell's account remains a definitive source.
Since MacDonnell's focus was on American society he rather slights its manifestations elsewhere. He treats the impact of Fifth Column activities in Europe, but neglects its most important and violent example - in the USSR during the Great Terror of 1936-39. There it paralleled the course of the Spanish Civil War, in which Moscow was deeply involved, with Stalin using the Fifth Column threat as his excuse for the massive blood purge of the Soviet state. Things never reached that peak in the US, of course, but it raises the issue of the dubious value of such manufactured hysteria, and the bitter irony that we become our own worst enemy when obsessed with the worst in others.
Another aspect of the war scare of 1940-41 was the vicious assault on Jehovah's Witnesses, which is only marginally mentioned here. The Witnesses were in fact the most popular target of public wrath: unlike real Nazis JWs popped up in every county and were ferociously attacked by the very fascist methods of the American Legion and local law enforcement, especially after the Supreme Court struck down their religious exception from flag saluting. Their grass-roots struggle may be over the horizon to scholars focused on large-issue politics; but the ACLU's brief for the JWs played a great role in neutralizing the Nazi scare, opening the door to the later civil rights movement.
The Fifth Column threat segued neatly into the McCarthy era with scarcely a change of gears, matching the continuity of the military-industrial complex. That Hoover's FBI and the Dies Commission (HUAC) trampled the Constitution under FDR is an inconvenient truth rather forgotten by postwar liberals. Also so neglected was FDR's willingness to exploit foreign-backed subversion as a hammer for beating isolationist/conservative political foes, exactly as MCarthyism was employed against liberals and labor. MacDonnell draws the connection, but again doesn't explore it with deserving depth.
He does make a dubious statement on p. 187: "In 1945, Joseph Stalin issued a public address stating that capitalism and Communism were locked in mortal combat." No source is given for this statement, an unlikely one considering the wartime Grand Alliance was still on and the allies yet hopeful for some kind of postwar détente between themselves. But MacDonnell is spot on in outlining the largely ineffectual Axis sabotage attempts, and the pathetic nature of the wanna-be Hitlers and Mussolinis of the Silver Shirts, German-American Bund, or Christian Front. Such easily-squashed marginal groups were the justification for vilifying mainstream dissenters, like Charles Lindbergh.
We now live in the age where new "Fifth Columns" of al-Qaeda, radical Muslims, and terrorist cells are whipped up (and often manufactured) by a security apparatus Hoover and FDR could only dream of in pulp novels. The legacy of WW II and its terminology ("appeasement," "quislings") lives on. As McDonnell states it takes a real crisis to make these gears mesh; new political culture scares (Russiagate, January 6 '21) have reinvigorated the disrupting heritage of mass hysteria politics; and like their predecessors, they are always the wagging tails of real war.
Though Francis MacDonnell does not put the "Nazi scare" into the long context of American social paranoia (the Mormons, immigrants, Catholics, anarchists, and other bugaboos) he does an overall fine job of exploring its ramifications in the fascist era in its paranoia over the "Fifth Column." The term itself is an era artifact that has lodged permanently in political discourse, referring to the Spanish Civil War and General Mola's hope of an internal, subversive force to match his four insurgent columns marching on Republican, anti-fascist Madrid.
Its most egregious action was the internment of Japanese-Americans, though other "Axis agents" (like Joe DiMaggio's Italian-born father) suffered in the backlash. This was of course a reification of the anti-German war scare of WW I and its sweeping Espionage Act, prefiguring totalitarianism before the term was coined. I do think a more intensive and detailed treatment would have improved the story; but since few have really examined the issue, as it was swallowed by the later Red Scare, as was the WW I hysteria before it, MacDonnell's account remains a definitive source.
Since MacDonnell's focus was on American society he rather slights its manifestations elsewhere. He treats the impact of Fifth Column activities in Europe, but neglects its most important and violent example - in the USSR during the Great Terror of 1936-39. There it paralleled the course of the Spanish Civil War, in which Moscow was deeply involved, with Stalin using the Fifth Column threat as his excuse for the massive blood purge of the Soviet state. Things never reached that peak in the US, of course, but it raises the issue of the dubious value of such manufactured hysteria, and the bitter irony that we become our own worst enemy when obsessed with the worst in others.
Another aspect of the war scare of 1940-41 was the vicious assault on Jehovah's Witnesses, which is only marginally mentioned here. The Witnesses were in fact the most popular target of public wrath: unlike real Nazis JWs popped up in every county and were ferociously attacked by the very fascist methods of the American Legion and local law enforcement, especially after the Supreme Court struck down their religious exception from flag saluting. Their grass-roots struggle may be over the horizon to scholars focused on large-issue politics; but the ACLU's brief for the JWs played a great role in neutralizing the Nazi scare, opening the door to the later civil rights movement.
The Fifth Column threat segued neatly into the McCarthy era with scarcely a change of gears, matching the continuity of the military-industrial complex. That Hoover's FBI and the Dies Commission (HUAC) trampled the Constitution under FDR is an inconvenient truth rather forgotten by postwar liberals. Also so neglected was FDR's willingness to exploit foreign-backed subversion as a hammer for beating isolationist/conservative political foes, exactly as MCarthyism was employed against liberals and labor. MacDonnell draws the connection, but again doesn't explore it with deserving depth.
He does make a dubious statement on p. 187: "In 1945, Joseph Stalin issued a public address stating that capitalism and Communism were locked in mortal combat." No source is given for this statement, an unlikely one considering the wartime Grand Alliance was still on and the allies yet hopeful for some kind of postwar détente between themselves. But MacDonnell is spot on in outlining the largely ineffectual Axis sabotage attempts, and the pathetic nature of the wanna-be Hitlers and Mussolinis of the Silver Shirts, German-American Bund, or Christian Front. Such easily-squashed marginal groups were the justification for vilifying mainstream dissenters, like Charles Lindbergh.
We now live in the age where new "Fifth Columns" of al-Qaeda, radical Muslims, and terrorist cells are whipped up (and often manufactured) by a security apparatus Hoover and FDR could only dream of in pulp novels. The legacy of WW II and its terminology ("appeasement," "quislings") lives on. As McDonnell states it takes a real crisis to make these gears mesh; new political culture scares (Russiagate, January 6 '21) have reinvigorated the disrupting heritage of mass hysteria politics; and like their predecessors, they are always the wagging tails of real war.
April 28, 2016
A good and well researched investigation of Fifth Column activities on the American Homefront during WWII. The revised version brings into play 9/11 which muddies the argument. The opening chapter deals with Fifth Columnists during WWI which, although pertinent, makes the main focus of the book a long time in coming. The chapter on the various homegrown organizations is probably the strongest, as it deals with real groups, many of them crackpots, as well as the censorship of It Can't Happen Here. By the end the book runs out of steam and could probably have been wound up more quickly. The last chapter, on Hoover and the FBI, makes me wish that FDR had removed him from the directorship in 1942.
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