ABOUT THIS BOOK

What was the relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt, architect of America’s rise to global power, and the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, which inspired passion and sacrifice, and shaped the road to world war? While many historians have portrayed the Spanish Civil War as one of Roosevelt’s most isolationist episodes, Dominic Tierney argues that it marked the president’s first attempt to challenge fascist aggression in Europe. Drawing on newly discovered archival documents, Tierney describes the evolution of Roosevelt’s thinking about the Spanish Civil War in relation to America’s broader geopolitical interests, as well as the fierce controversy in the United States over Spanish policy.

Between 1936 and 1939, Roosevelt’s perceptions of the Spanish Civil War were transformed. Initially indifferent toward which side won, FDR became an increasingly committed supporter of the leftist government. He believed that German and Italian intervention in Spain was part of a broader program of fascist aggression, and he worried that the Spanish Civil War would inspire fascist revolutions in Latin America. In response, Roosevelt tried to send food to Spain as well as illegal covert aid to the Spanish government, and to mediate a compromise solution to the civil war. However unsuccessful these initiatives proved in the end, they represented an important stage in Roosevelt’s emerging strategy to aid democracy in Europe.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Dominic Tierney is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College. He is a coauthor (with Dominic D. P. Johnson) of Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics.

REVIEWS

“FDR and the Spanish Civil War is an important, well documented study. It will not only prompt a rethinking of how the Spanish Civil War shaped and reflected Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policies; it will become the standard book on the subject.”—Warren F. Kimball, author of The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman

“Based on exhaustive research, this highly readable book is an important contribution to an important subject. Dominic Tierney subtly analyzes FDR’s juggling of international and electoral pressures to explain the contradictions and dramatic changes in his passage from isolationism to bitter regret about American abandonment of the Spanish Republic.”—Paul Preston, author of The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge

“[N]uanced. . . . Tierney provides a long overdue update on this subject. . . . Even for most readers who know the outcome of this story, Tierney’s account manages to be suspenseful.”

-- Soledad Fox Journal of Contemporary History

“Tierney makes a solid and important argument about the Spanish war as an important experience in the development of US foreign policy on the continent prior to the Second World War.”

-- David A. Messenger International History Review

“Tierney makes a valuable and timely contribution to the literature on the era of Roosevelt by providing a focused and dedicated study on the thirty-second president and the Spanish Civil War . . . This is a most impressive book.”

-- J. Simon Rofe Diplomacy and Statecraft

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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