Clemson University TigerPrints All Theses Theses 5-2015 None Spoke Spanish: An Examination of the Catholic-Protestant Discourse on the Spanish Civil War in the United States John Maxie Gause Clemson University Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses Recommended Citation Gause, John Maxie, "None Spoke Spanish: An Examination of the Catholic-Protestant Discourse on the Spanish Civil War in the United States" (2015). All Theses. 2132. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/2132 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NONE SPOKE SPANISH: AN EXAMINATION OF THE CATHOLIC-PROTESTANT DISCOURSE ON THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES A Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts History by John Maxie Gause May, 2015 Accepted by: Dr. Richard L. Saunders, Jr., Committee Chair Dr. Alan Grubb Dr. Steven G. Marks ABSTRACT The following study endeavors to synthesize knowledge on what has heretofore been an almost entirely unexplored factor in the internationalized Spanish Civil War, that of the debate between Roman Catholics and Protestants in the United States. Upon examining documentary evidence collected from three different periodicals from either denominational camp between February, 1936 and June, 1939, a number of suggestive conclusions have been reached. First, American Catholics and Protestants were fundamentally at odds regarding the Spanish Republic, the Popular Front, and Francisco Franco's Nationalist insurgency which rose five months after the election of that Leftist coalition. This study indicates that Catholics universally, but not unfairly, condemned the Popular Front as a Soviet construct, bent upon fomenting revolutionary chaos and, hence, supported the rebellion as the shield and the sword of Western Civilization and Christendom. Conversely, Protestant opinion adamantly defended the Spanish government which, despite containing some unpleasant radical elements, would nevertheless be represented as being in consonance with the democratic tradition and humankind's hatred of squalid backwardness. Next, throughout the course of the conflict, both segments of Christian opinion entrenched themselves in their respective positions and would champion ―their‖ Spanish belligerents by employing of a ceaseless stream of proving by assertion, or argumentum ad infinitum. This would include a brief, albeit curious, episode in which both sides would attempt to correlate either combatant faction in Spain with the revolutionary and ii democratic heritage of the United States. Finally, and due in part to the previous item, the almost unswerving partisan fidelities of those American Catholic and Protestant publications demonstrated that they were, in fact, ignorant as to the underlying issues and the fundamental realities of the struggle in Spain. Their reductionist interpretations rendered in black-and-white a scenario that was nothing if not a cloudy, ambiguous gray. iii DEDICATION For those I love and for those who have left us behind. ―History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon‖ W. H. Auden, ―Spain‖ iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In any academic study of this size, there are bound to be dozens of individuals who contributed to its production and the well-being of its author. Here one has space for but a few. First, I would like to offer my profound thanks and appreciation to Dr. Richard Saunders for his years-long status as a personal friend and professional mentor. I would not have been here if not for him. And next, while I never knew Dr. Alan Grubb during the time in which I was an undergraduate at Clemson University, I now greatly regret that reality. My first experience with him came when I took his split course on the First World War. He has been very kind and generous toward me and my work and for that I thank him. The exact same can be said of Dr. Steven Marks, although I studied early Western Civilization with him years ago. But I would also like the extend my warmest thanks to him for enhancing my interest in Soviet history, specifically after completing his outstanding course on the height of Stalin's Purge in 1937 and sharing a Russian meal with the class at his home. Finally, as far as professorial acknowledgments go, I would be greatly remiss in not saluting Dr. Paul Anderson. He, too, acted as a mentor during a very difficult time, helped set me upon this path, and, without his assistance, the second chapter of this work would not have come together nearly so well, if at all. It would also be negligent of me to not acknowledge the support, camaraderie, and general positivity of my colleagues in our cohort, those who came just before ours, and those who are just now rising through the ranks. And, of course, one must never forget one's family: my father, mother, two younger sisters, grandmother, aunts, uncles, v and all the rest. Nor should one ever forget one's friends—my other brothers and sisters. There is never enough room to name them all. But they know who they are. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE.......................................................................................................................i ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................ii DEDICATION....................................................................................................................iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: CRUSADE OR CLASS CONFLICT?.......................................................14 CHAPTER 2: ―A SPECIES OF RELIGIOUS WAR‖.......................................................72 CHAPTER 3: ―THE TYRANNY OF SEMANTICS‖.....................................................124 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................176 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................182 vii A Brief Introduction and Historiography1 The brutal civil war that ravaged Spain for nearly three years between July, 1936 and April, 1939 has long been a topic of curiosity for professional historians and amateur enthusiasts. An exceptionally complicated conflict, textured and nuanced with labyrinthine intricacies, it has been burdened with a wealth of historiographical interpretations. Often, it has been sentimentally portrayed as the ―last great cause‖ of the modern era, the ―good fight,‖ most commonly between the forces of liberal democracy on the one hand and those of reactionary, militaristic fascism on the other. Other opinions have held that the struggle in Spain stood as an ideological clash between communism and fascism, a battle between atheism and religion. But what seems to be an almost universal thematic facet of these interpretations has been that the Spanish Civil War acted as something of a prologue or dress rehearsal for the European theater of the Second World War, if not its actual opening act. This is, of course, not an especially surprising conclusion, given the almost immediate ―internationalization‖ of that conflict, which transformed Spain's domestic conflict into a proxy war between the Great Powers then competing for dominance. In very brief, the war began from a cauldron of purely Spanish forces but was quickly contaminated by external interference. Following the fall of the essentially dictatorial premiership of M. P. de Rivera in 1930 and the subsequent collapse of the Alfonsine monarchy (under Alfonso XIII, of the House of Bourbon) in April, 1931, 1 For additional information, see annotated bibliography. 1 Spanish popular opinion allowed for the creation of a second Spanish Republic.2 The new government of Spain had arisen primarily through the efforts of the assorted political Left and their immediate aims were to institute a battery of reforms that were inimical to the traditionally vested interests of the constituents of the Right. The new Constitution stripped the heirs of the Spanish aristocracy of their elite legal status and disestablished the Roman Catholic Church. There would be a movement to reorganize (or rather partially dismantle) the bloated Spanish military officer corps; legislative action would be undertaken to proceed toward the secularization of education, the nationalization of banks and railways, and there would be much discussion on the topic of the redistribution of land and wealth.3 Leftist control of Spain's governmental infrastructure did not last, however. By November, 1933, the forces of the conservative and traditionalist Right organized a political confederation (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas, CEDA) under the leadership of one G. Robles and handily claimed victory in the elections of that year. Realigned thus, the government of the Republic took on a reactionary character and endeavored to reverse many of the policies put into place by the preceding regime—even to the extent of insisting that its efforts were necessarily defensive against the encroaching Marxist plague.4