Anti-fascism, the united front, and Spanish republican aid in the United States, 1936--1940

Americans concerned about the fate of Spain's Second Republic came from a broad range of political ideologies and social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. Through a network of organizations at the national and local levels, they built a political movement to send relief aid to the Spanish Republic and to promote its cause. The North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, Medical Bureau, American Friends of Spanish Democracy, Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas de Ayuda de Espana (United Spanish Societies), and the Comite Popular Democratico all emerged as important organizations of this movement. The primary intention of their collective efforts was to lift a U.S. embargo, imposed through legal measures by the Congress and President Roosevelt in the first year of the war. Through their efforts, aid proponents hoped not only to turn back these legal limits to the Republic's abilities to procure arms for its defense, but to facilitate a public debate about the need to head off another world war before it could start. The movement found points of unity, but it was wracked from within by internal conflicts, and hindered from without by several different factors. The internal conflicts were the result of both sectarian squabbling and organizational difficulties. Outside the movement, a segment of Catholic opinion was lined up against repeal of the embargo, and anti-communists who associated the aid movement with the Communist party were committed to halting any advances of the Spanish republican cause. During all of these activities, the lingering economic depression sapped the commitment of many Americans to political matters, and an entrenched isolationism inhibited the appeals for aid to a foreign country in which the United States was not directly involved.