Pro-Franco Anti-communism: Ellery Sedgwick and the Atlantic Monthly

Abstract

Commentators have either ignored American supporters of General Franco's Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) or dismissed them as cranks. In reality, the pro-Franco cause was both more widespread and more complex than prevailing historiography allows. Many Franco supporters were also anti-fascists and supporters in other respects of progressive causes. This article examines Ellery Sedgwick's support of Franco. Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, one of the leading journals of opinion at the time, Sedgwick was also representative of the American social élite. The article argues that Sedgwick was not interested in Franco per se, but promoted his cause because he sought to demonstrate the danger that international communism posed to American national identity during a period of unprecedented insecurity. Caught in a unique historical moment, pro-Franco anti-communists of 1938 were patriots to themselves but un-American to the New Deal state.