The Fifth Column Menaces America on a Thousand Fronts
- Title:
- The Fifth Column Menaces America on a Thousand Fronts
- Alternate Title:
- The Fifth Column Menaces America on a Thousand Fronts
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Kamp, Joseph Peter & Gill, A. Cloyd
- Other Creators:
- Constitutional Education League, Inc., publisher
- Date:
- 1941
- Date 2:
- 2024-04-25
- ID Number:
- 2294.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2294_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1940 - 1959
- Subject:
- World War II
Communism & Cold War
Politics & Government - Measurement:
- 60 x 91 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This large 1941 poster purports to show how the Communists - allegedly in league with the Nazis and various Fascist organizations - had established a pervasive, nationwide “Fifth Column” that “Menaces America on a Thousand Fronts.” Separate symbols are used to denote the locations of Communist Central, District and Section Headquarters, as well as Communist Workers’ Schools, Training Camps and Literature Centers. Markers show the locations of similar operations of the Nazis, German Bund and Fascists (including “Native Fascists”). The country is divided to show the separate Communist District Boundaries and Nazi Department Boundaries. The text on the face of the map asserts that the Fifth Column has “penetrated” the U.S. Army, Navy, National Guard and Defense Industries. For a 1940 map aimed exclusively at the Germany Fifth Column, see “The Nazi Spider Attempts to Grasp Our Nation in Its Tentacles,” ID #2355.
The verso (ID #2294.02) contains a “Roll of Dishonor” listing over 100 of “the more important Communist, Nazi, Fascist and native totalitarian groups” and various “united front” and “fellow-traveler” affiliates. This list is based on “Government investigations; on sworn testimony and records of the Dies [House Un-American Activities] Committee and other Legislative inquiries, and on extensive data and secret documents in the files of the Constitutional Education League, Inc.,” the publisher of this map. In addition to a handful of expected Communist and Socialist organizations, the list is dominated by scores of national, state and local labor groups, including Auto Workers, Clothing Workers, Electrical Workers, Hotel Workers, Mine Workers, Teachers, Ladies Garment Workers and Transport Workers. The CIO is singled out as “a revolutionary movement - the creature and industrial arm of the Communist Party.”
Despite the suggestion that the Communists, Nazis and Fascists were conspiring to bring down America, the fundamental thrust of the map is anti-Communist. That was the core mission of the Constitutional Education League, founded in 1919 as part of the original Red Scare. And the text verso is principally devoted to attacking the Communists, the “heart and brain of the Red Fifth Column in America,” “a foreign conspiracy masked as a political party . . . whose intrigues stagger the imagination and whose power and influence has made itself felt in almost every phase of our national life.” On the other hand, “Hitler’s Nazis” are described simply as “Brown Bolsheviks” (a characterization that both Hitler and the Soviets would certainly have disputed), and the Fascists are said to be concerned primarily not with imposing their will on this country, but on securing aid for their causes abroad. Those on the “Roll of Dishonor” share a “collective goal . . . they would undermine our Government, destroy it, and set up in its place a new system of society based upon the collective concepts of Karl Marx.”
The quote at the top right of the map from Chairman Martin Dies confirms the basic focus on attacking the Communists. Referring to the German invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941, Dies ignores the fracturing of the alleged “Fifth Column.” Instead, he asserts that “The influence of the Communist Party in America will increase tremendously as a result of the break between Hitler and Stalin” because the “gullible and fellow travelers in America who aided the Communist cause before the [Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact in 1939] may be expected to resume their activities in behalf of Moscow.” (It seems likely that this map was prepared for publication before the German invasion of Russia and published shortly thereafter. There are many dates in the text on the map and verso, none later than July 7, 1941.)
Joseph P. Kamp was a long-time officer of the Constitutional Education League and author of numerous pamphlets associating the American labor movement with Communism. (One of these, “Join the CIO and Help Build a Soviet America,” is advertised on the verso.) Apart from this map, he had a well-known record of pro-Nazi activities before the U.S. entered World War II, as well as anti-Semitic views. After the war, he attempted to link President Eisenhower to the “communist conspiracy.” Carleton 1985, 118. In the 1950s, Kamp was twice tried for contempt after failing to respond to Congressional requests for information about his organization’s contributors (New York Times, June 29, 1951, p.8) and once convicted.
Cloyd Gill was for many years an editor and associate of William Randolph Hearst; he was fervently anti-Communist and anti-labor. For another anti-Communist poster map by Gill, see ID #1279, “Wake Up America - Repel the Grave Diggers of Capitalism” (1939).
In 1936, Gill promised favorable coverage by Hearst papers and radio stations nationwide if the American Legion would suppress an "Americanism" pamphlet prepared by one its Commanders, on the ground that it gave excessive emphasis to freedom of speech. Seldes 1938, 121-24. He was also one of the organizers of the Asheville Conference, "Christian Americanism against Atheistic Communism," which collapsed in the summer of 1936 amid charges of anti-semitism. Walsh 1936, 14-16. In 1941, the Anti-Defamation League reported that Gill had been fired from the Hearst organization for "extreme bigotry" and was writing pro-German, pro-Japanese, anti-democratic propaganda. Finder 1941, 16. Interestingly, after the war began, Gill published an “Open Letter” entitled The Jew as My Neighbor urging Charles Lindbergh’s to abandon his anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies.
In July 1942, the Constitutional Education League was indicted, along with 28 individuals and a number of other organizations and publications, on charges of sedition, specifically, of seeking to undermine the morale and foster mutiny among U.S. armed forces. New York Times, July 24, 1942, pp. 1, 8.
What matters on this map is not the specific geographic location of any group, but the pervasiveness of the subject, its size, scope and dispersion. The collection includes a number of such maps. In some cases, maps of this kind are intended to reflect favorably on the phenomenon illustrated, for example, the British Empire (ID #1167); cultural Germans in Easter Europe (ID #1264); nations supporting the U.S. war in Vietnam (ID #2042). More often, the mapmaker’s message is unmistakably critical, for example the number of prison and slave labor camps in the Soviet Union (ID ##1330, 1337, 1345, 1346) and Bulgaria (ID #2113); Communist, Nazi and other Fascist groups in pre-World War II America (ID #2294); hate groups in America (ID #2304).
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- Image
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