‘These Memories Cannot Be Wiped’: Remembering, Forgetting, And Silencing The Spanish Civil War And Francisco Franco’s Dictatorship In The United States, 1937-1962

On the eve of Allied victory in World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed to the US Ambassador to Spain, “Most certainly we do not forget Spain’s official position with and assistance to our Axis enemies.…These memories cannot be wiped.” However, by 1962, over three dozen American Congressmen professed their admiration for Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and his anti-communist “crusade,” selectively forgetting his fascist crimes. This research traces the development of US foreign policy toward the Franco regime from 1937, the year 2,800 American volunteers traveled to Spain to fight against fascism, to 1962, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the formation of this Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It argues that Spain was crucial to American and global ideological development from anti-fascism to anti-communism during the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and Cold War eras. This dissertation project also incorporates voices of American anti-fascist activists who challenged the US’s gradual embrace of the Franco regime. American diplomats, who came to recognize Spain as a strategic geopolitical ally against communism, branded these activists as ‘communists’ during the Cold War Red Scare. Building on a memory studies framework to examine how political and military actors utilized forgetting and silencing to achieve US foreign policy objectives, this project asserts the Spanish Civil War and subsequent Franco dictatorship as formative to American foreign policy in the twentieth century.