A fifth column (or internal enemy) is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize openly to assist an external attack. The term is also applied to organized actions by military personnel. Clandestine fifth column activities can involve acts of sabotage, disinformation, espionage or terrorism executed within defense lines by secret sympathizers with an external force.
History Origin Although the term is generally thought to have originated in the Spanish Civil War, there is at least one much earlier use of the term in another European theatre. In 1906, the Austrian military attache in Belgrade, Joseph Pomiankowski, described an element of Serbian nationalists as "fifth-column work of the [Serbian] Radicals...which systematically poisons the attitude of our South Slav population".Christopher Clark, "The Sleepwalkers", (2012), p.82
The term fifth column was used in Spain (originally ) during the early phase of the Spanish Civil War. It gained popularity in the Republican media in early October 1936 and immediately started to spread abroad.In French newspapers the term first appeared on October 4, 1936, one day after its first usage in the Madrid press, La Passionaria preche la terreur, [in:] Le Journal 04.10.1936. In more distant countries like Poland the term started to appear since mid-October, see e.g. Oviedo ostatecznie uwolnione, [in:] Dziennik Wileński 18.10.1936.
The term appeared in a secret telegram dated 30 September 1936, that was sent to Berlin by the German chargé d'affaires in Alicante, . In the telegram, he referred to an unidentified "supposed statement by Franco" that "is being circulated" (apparently in the Republican zone or in the Republican-held Levantine zone). This "supposed statement" held that Franco had claimed that there were four Nationalist columns approaching Madrid, and a fifth column waiting to attack from the inside.Ruiz, Julius (2014), The 'Red Terror' and the Spanish Civil War, Cambridge, , p. 187. The telegram was part of the secret German diplomatic correspondence and was discovered long after the civil war.
The first identified public use of the term during the Spanish Civil War is in the 3 October 1936 issue of the Madrid Communist daily Mundo Obrero. In a front-page article, the party propagandist Dolores Ibárruri referred to a statement very similar (or identical) to the one that Völckers had referred to in his telegram, but attributed it to General Emilio Mola rather than to Franco.This edition of Mundo Obrero is not available for consultation online. Many authors claim that in the article Ibarruri referred to an unidentified radio broadcast of Mola, see e.g. Preston Paul (2011), La Guerra Civil Española: reacción, revolución y venganza, Madrid, . However, other scholars quoting Ibarruri do not refer to the broadcast detail, see e.g. Ruiz 2014, pp. 185–186. On the same day, the PCE activist Domingo Girón made a similar claim during a public rally.Domingo Girón was a Madrid mid-level Communist activist. In his speech he referred to "cierta declaración hecha por el general Mola a un periodista extranjero", Un gran mitin del Socorro Rojo internacional, [in:] Hoja Oficial del lunes 04.10.1936 During the next few days, various Republican papers repeated the story, but with differing detail; some attributed the phrase to General Queipo de Llano,Ruiz 2014, pp. 186–187 while later some Soviet propagandists would claim it was coined by José Enrique Varela.Mijail Koltsov, Diario de la guerra de España, Barcelona 2009, ISBN 9788408088707, p. 208 By mid-October, the media was already warning of the "famous fifth column".Informacion radiotelegrafica, [in:] El bien publico 13.10.1936.
Historians have never identified the original statement referred to by Völckers, Ibárruri, Girón, de Jong, and others. The transcripts of Francisco Franco's, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano's, and Emilio Mola's radio addresses have been published, but they do not contain the term,Preston Paul (2012), The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain, London, . and no other original statement containing this phrase has ever surfaced. Australian journalist Noel Monks, who took part in Mola's press conference on 28 October 1936, claimed that Mola referred to on that day,Preston Paul (2011), La Guerra Civil Española: reacción, revolución y venganza, Madrid, . but by that time the term had already been in use in the Republican press for more than three weeks.Prensa Historica service, Hemeroteca Digital service.
Historiographic works offer differing perspectives on authorship of the term. Many scholars have no doubt about Mola's role and refer to "fifth column" as "a term coined in 1936 by General Emilio Mola",Kennedy, David M. (ed.) (2007), The Library of Congress World War II Companion, New York, , p. 79; also Lejeune Anthony (ed.) (2018), Concise Dictionary of Foreign Quotations, London, ; also Romero Salvadó, Francisco J., (2013), Historical Dictionary of the Spanish Civil War, London, , p. 199. though they acknowledge that his exact statement cannot be verified.Preston Paul (2011), El holocausto español: Odio y exterminio en la Guerra Civil y después, 2011, . In some sources, Mola is named as a person who had used the term during an impromptu press interview, and different—though detailed—versions of the exchange are offered.One version is , Carrillo Alejandro (1943), Defensa de la revolución en el Parlamento, s.n. 1943. Other version is , Pérez de Oliva, Fernán (1991), Historia de la invención de las Indias, Madrid 1991, , p. 22. Probably the most popular version describes the theory of Mola's authorship with a grade of doubt, either noting that it is presumed but has never been proven,Barros Andrew, Thomas Martin (2018), The Civilianization of War: The Changing Civil–Military Divide, 1914–2014, Cambridge, , p. 49. or that the phrase "is attributed" to Mola,Loeffel Robert (2015), The Fifth Column in World War II: Suspected Subversives in the Pacific War and Australia, London, . who "apparently claimed" so,Beevor, Antony (2006), The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, London, . or else noting that (the famous fifth column that General Mola seems to have referred to).Cierva, Ricardo de la (1996), Historia esencial de la Guerra Civil Española: todos los problemas resueltos, sesenta años después, Madrid, .
Second World War The notion of a fifth column caught the popular imagination of the public across Europe at the start of the Second World War, especially when people were faced with the rapid occupation of Norway and Denmark by the Nazis, and then the collapse of Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The fear of betrayal was heightened by the rapid fall of France in 1940, which some blamed on internal weakness and a pro-German fifth column. Reports of treachery were common, and when the French premier Paul Reynaud announced that "the bridges over the Meuse had been betrayed", a BBC employee wrote, "I have no doubt that German thoroughness has succeeded in planting a fifth column at vulnerable points." On 23 May 1940, the month after Germany invaded France, the British government under newly appointed prime minister Winston Churchill banned the British Union of Fascists under the Treachery Act 1940. In a speech to the House of Commons on 4 June, Churchill reassured MPs that "Parliament has given us the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand." In the United States, a series of photos run in the June 1940 issue of Life magazine warned of "signs of Nazi Fifth Column Everywhere". In July 1940, Time magazine referred to talk of a fifth column as a "national phenomenon".Richard W. Steele, Free Speech in the Good War (St. Martin's Press, 1999, 75–76).
In August 1940, The New York Times mentioned "the first spasm of fear engendered by the success of fifth columns in less fortunate countries".The New York Times: Delbert Clark, "Aliens to Begin Registering Tuesday," August 25, 1940. Retrieved June 27, 2012. One report identified participants in Nazi "fifth columns" as "partisans of authoritarian government everywhere", citing Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and the Netherlands. During the Nazi invasion of Norway, the head of the Norwegian fascist party, Vidkun Quisling, proclaimed the formation of a new fascist government in control of Norway, with himself as Prime Minister, by the end of the first day of fighting. The word "quisling" soon became a byword for "collaborator" or "traitor".
The New York Times on 11 August 1940, featured three editorial cartoons using the term. John Langdon-Davies, a British journalist who covered the Spanish Civil War, wrote an account called The Fifth Column which was published the same year. In November 1940, Ralph Thomson, reviewing Harold Lavine's Fifth Column in America, a study of Communist and fascist groups in the US, in The New York Times, questioned his choice of that title: "the phrase has been worked so hard that it no longer means much of anything".
In Brazil, the term "Fifth Column" was used to accuse descendants of Germans of being supporters of the Nazi government. This was within a context of repression, in which speaking German was prohibited and its speakers were identified as "fifth columnists".
Immediately following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, US Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox issued a statement that "the most effective Fifth Column work of the entire war was done in Hawaii with the exception of Norway". In a column published in The Washington Post, dated 12 February 1942, the columnist Walter Lippmann wrote of imminent danger from actions that might be taken by Japanese Americans. Titled "The Fifth Column on the Coast", he wrote of possible attacks that could be made along the West Coast of the United States that would amplify damage inflicted by a potential attack by Japanese naval and air forces. Suspicion about an active fifth column on the coast led eventually to the internment of Japanese Americans.
During the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in December 1941 said the indigenous Moro Muslims were "capable of dealing with Japanese fifth columnists and invaders alike". Another in the Vancouver Sun the following month alleged that the large population of Japanese immigrants in Davao in the Philippines welcomed the invasion: "the first assault on Davao was aided by numbers of Fifth Columnists–residents of the town". However, postwar analysis of both Japanese and American military records, including the interrogation of surviving Japanese officers, fail to support the claims of a Japanese fifth column existing in the Philippines prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
Later usage
During the Hamidian era of Turkey as well as during the Armenian Genocide, Ottoman bureaucratic correspondence portrayed Armenians as security threats using labels such as "vagrant", "anarchist", fesad or müfsid ("villain" or "evildoer"), and şaki ("bandit"), while by 1915 the Young Turk press was describing Armenians as "internal enemies" and traitors allegedly allied with Russia and the Entente. Although "fifth column" was not contemporary terminology, modern historians frequently employ it retrospectively to characterize this portrayal of Armenians by the Ottomans. Certain historians have also noted a contradiction in these accusations, as the Ottoman government had itself unsuccessfully attempted to recruit the Armenian Revolutionary Federation to operate as a fifth column behind Russian lines.